Weird Tales / July, 1934 / Margaret Brundage Cover / H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth

Indianapolis: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1934. First Edition . Single Issue Magazine. Very Good Plus. 9 3/4" x 6 1/2. Brundage, Margaret Johnson. Indianapolis: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1934. First Edition of the July, 1934 issue of Weird Tales. Volume 24, No. 1. Cover illustration of Arlton Eadie's "The Trail of the Cloven Hoof" by the estimable Margaret Brundage. Interior illlustrations by Hugh Rankin and others. 9 3/4" x 6 1/2". 144 pp. 6 3/4 x 10 inches. Very Good plus, at least, by pulp grading. Minimal edge wear; spine is intact with some fading and a two inch split on the top center; tight with supple pages; cover has medium gloss to it. Very slight musty scent. Superb copy of a very perishable item. A scarce issue of the highly collectible series, edited through this time period by its most famous and focused editor, Farnsworth Wright, who made Weird Tales into an ongoing fantasy-and-horror Hall of Fame exposition, with writers Like H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Seabury Quinn, Robert E. Howard and Robert Bloch contributing quite regularly, and Brundage providing the covers starting in 1933 in appropriately - and now classicly - pulpy style, often lurid, sometimes with a BDSM sexual lean. Brundage was the only famous female pulp era artist, the only one at all outside girlie mags, and Wright may be the only editor to reject Lovecraft and Smith offerings multiple times. Quite a rag. This issue's tales include, in addition to Eadie's featured cover piece, Clark Ashton Smith's "The Disinterment of Venus"; the H.P. Lovecraft / E. H. Price collaboration, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key"; August W. Derleth's "Wild Grapes"; Harold Ward's "The Master of Souls"; Paul Ernst's "The Illusion of Flame"; the last installment of Arthur William Bernal's "Vampires of the Moon"; Ralph Allen Lang's "The Thunderstones of Nuflo"; Elliott O'Donnell's "One Christmas Eve"; Jay Wilmer Benjamin's "Drowned Argosies"; a reprint of a Weird Tales story from its first issue, Willard E. Hawkins' "The Dead Man's Tale"; and verse by Ethel Morgan-Dunham. L100