Edwin Baird

Edwin Baird (1886-1957) was the first editor of "Weird Tales", the pioneering pulp magazine that specialized in horror fiction.

Baird, hired by "Weird Tales" publisher J. C. Henneberger, put out the magazine's premiere issue, dated March 1923. [Joshi and Schultz, p. 15.] Over the course of the next year, Baird published some of the magazine's most famous writers, including H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn. [Carter, p. 37.]

Baird--in marked contrast to his successor--accepted everything that Lovecraft submitted to the magazine, [Joshi and Schultz, p. 305.] including "The Hound", "Arthur Jermyn", "The Statement of Randolph Carter", "The Cats of Ulthar", "Dagon", "The Picture in the House", "The Rats in the Walls", "Hypnos" and "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs". [Carter, pp. 32-35.] He did, however, insist that Lovecraft retype his first submissions using double spacing, causing the author to remark, "I am not certain whether or not I should bother." [H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Frank Belknap Long, May 13, 1923; cited in Carter, p. 33.]

Under Baird's editorship, "Weird Tales" lost a considerable amount of money--estimated at $51,000. [Carter, pp. 35-37.] After the April 1924 issue, Henneberger fired him and offered his job to Lovecraft. [Carter, pp. 41-43.] When Lovecraft declined, the publisher made Farnsworth Wright, until then Baird's assistant, the editor of "Weird Tales", a position he held until 1940. [Joshi and Schultz, pp. 304-305.]

Baird remained as editor of another of Henneberger's titles, "Detective Tales". In this post, he rejected Lovecraft's "The Shunned House" in July 1925. [Joshi and Schultz, p. 14.]

References

*Lin Carter, "Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos".
*S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia".

Notes