Honoré de Balzac Writes About “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” and His Epic Coffee Addiction

in Food & Drink, Literature | July 9th, 2024

174 years after his death, Hon­oré de Balzac remains an extreme­ly mod­ern-sound­ing wag. Were he alive today, he’d no doubt be pound­ing out his provoca­tive obser­va­tions in a cof­fice, a café whose free wifi, lenient staff, and abun­dant elec­tri­cal out­lets make it a mag­net for writ­ers.

One has a hunch Star­bucks would not suf­fice…

Judg­ing by his humor­ous essay, “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” Balzac would seek out a place that stays open past mid­night, and the strongest, most arcane brew­ing meth­ods. The Buck­et of Black Snakes was his Green Fairy. He was that most cun­ning of addicts, some­times imbib­ing up to 50 cups of cof­fee a day, care­ful­ly hus­band­ing his binges, know­ing just when to pull back from the edge in order to pro­long his vice.

Cof­fee — he called it a “great pow­er in [his] life” — made pos­si­ble a gru­el­ing writ­ing sched­ule that had him going to bed at six, ris­ing at 1am to work until eight in the morn­ing, then grab­bing forty winks before putting in anoth­er sev­en hours.

It takes more than a cou­ple of cap­puc­ci­nos to main­tain that kind of pace. When­ev­er a rea­son­able human dose failed to stim­u­late, Balzac would begin eat­ing cof­fee pow­der on an emp­ty stom­ach, a “hor­ri­ble, rather bru­tal method” that he rec­om­mend­ed “only to men of exces­sive vig­or, men with thick black hair and skin cov­ered with liv­er spots, men with big square hands and legs shaped like bowl­ing pins.”

Appar­ent­ly it got the job done. He cranked out eighty-five nov­els in twen­ty years and died at 51. The cause? Too much work and caf­feine, they like to say. Oth­er spec­u­lat­ed caus­es of death include hyper­ten­sion, ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis, and even syphilis.

Above, watch actor Paul Gia­mat­ti play Balzac all hopped up on cof­fee. And here you can behold The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul Gia­mat­ti Plays Hon­oré de Balzac, Hopped Up on 50 Cof­fees Per Day

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has­n’t touched the stuff for two whole weeks. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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“Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the English Language

in Books, Literature | July 7th, 2024


There are some words out there that are bril­liant­ly evoca­tive and at the same time impos­si­ble to ful­ly trans­late. Yid­dish has the word shli­ma­zl, which basi­cal­ly means a per­pet­u­al­ly unlucky per­son. Ger­man has the word Backpfeifen­gesicht, which rough­ly means a face that is bad­ly in need of a fist. And then there’s the Japan­ese word tsun­doku, which per­fect­ly describes the state of my apart­ment. It means buy­ing books and let­ting them pile up unread.

The word dates back to the very begin­ning of mod­ern Japan, the Mei­ji era (1868–1912) and has its ori­gins in a pun. Tsun­doku, which lit­er­al­ly means read­ing pile, is writ­ten in Japan­ese as 積ん読. Tsunde oku means to let some­thing pile up and is writ­ten 積んでおく. Some wag around the turn of the cen­tu­ry swapped out that oku (おく) in tsunde oku for doku (読) – mean­ing to read. Then since tsunde doku is hard to say, the word got mushed togeth­er to form tsun­doku.

As with oth­er Japan­ese words like karaoke, tsuna­mi, and otaku, I think it’s high time that tsun­doku enter the Eng­lish lan­guage. Now if only we can fig­ure out a word to describe unread ebooks that lan­guish on your Kin­dle. E‑tsundoku? Tsunkin­dle? Contem­plate the mat­ter for a while.

The illus­tra­tion above was made when a Red­di­tor asked his daugh­ter to illus­trate the word “Tsun­doku,” and she did not dis­ap­point.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in July 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Virtue of Own­ing Books You Haven’t Read: Why Umber­to Eco Kept an “Antili­brary”

An Archive of Vivid­ly Illus­trat­ed Japan­ese School­books, from the 1800s to World War II

The Japan­ese Fairy Tale Series: The Illus­trat­ed Books That Intro­duced West­ern Read­ers to Japan­ese Tales (1885–1922)

A Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed 1925 Japan­ese Edi­tion of Aesop’s Fables by Leg­endary Children’s Book Illus­tra­tor Takeo Takei

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his art blog Veep­to­pus.

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Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Hamburger Recipe

in Food & Drink, Literature | July 3rd, 2024

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2013, the food writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan stum­bled across an arti­cle in the Boston Globe describ­ing a trove of dig­i­tized doc­u­ments from Ernest Hem­ing­way’s home in Cuba that had been recent­ly donat­ed to the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library and Muse­um, home of Hem­ing­way’s per­son­al archives. One line in the arti­cle caught her eye: “And the more mun­dane, like his instruc­tions to the house­hold staff, includ­ing how to pre­pare his ham­burg­ers: ground beef, onions, gar­lic, India rel­ish, and capers, cooked so the edges were crispy but the cen­ter red and juicy.”

Tan, a Hem­ing­way fan and the author of A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Mem­oir of Food and Fam­i­ly, set out to find the recipe and try it. She report­ed her expe­ri­ences on the Paris Review Dai­ly blog. “I had made burg­ers before, count­less times on count­less evenings,” Tan writes. “This one was dif­fer­ent; I was­n’t mak­ing just any burg­er — I was attempt­ing to recre­ate Hem­ing­way’s ham­burg­er. And it had to be just right.”

Here is Papa’s favorite recipe for pan-fried ham­burg­ers, as report­ed by Tan:

Ingre­di­ents–

1 lb. ground lean beef

2 cloves, minced gar­lic

2 lit­tle green onions, fine­ly chopped

1 heap­ing tea­spoon, India rel­ish

2 table­spoons, capers

1 heap­ing tea­spoon, Spice Islands sage

Spice Islands Beau Monde Sea­son­ing — 1/2 tea­spoon

Spice Islands Mei Yen Pow­der — 1/2 tea­spoon

1 egg, beat­en in a cup with a fork

About 1/3 cup dry red or white wine

1 table­spoon cook­ing oil

What to do–

Break up the meat with a fork and scat­ter the gar­lic, onion and dry sea­son­ings over it, then mix them into the meat with a fork or your fin­gers. Let the bowl of meat sit out of the ice­box for ten or fif­teen min­utes while you set the table and make the sal­ad. Add the rel­ish, capers, every­thing else includ­ing wine and let the meat sit, qui­et­ly mar­i­nat­ing, for anoth­er ten min­utes if pos­si­ble. Now make your fat, juicy pat­ties with your hands. The pat­ties should be an inch thick, and soft in tex­ture but not run­ny. Have the oil in your fry­ing pan hot but not smok­ing when you drop in the pat­ties and then turn the heat down and fry the burg­ers about four min­utes. Take the pan off the burn­er and turn the heat high again. Flip the burg­ers over, put the pan back on the hot fire, then after one minute, turn the heat down again and cook anoth­er three min­utes. Both sides of the burg­ers should be crispy brown and the mid­dle pink and juicy.

Spice Islands stopped mak­ing Mei Yen Pow­der sev­er­al years ago, accord­ing to Tan. You can recre­ate it, she says, by mix­ing nine parts salt, nine parts sug­ar and two parts MSG. “If a recipe calls for 1 tea­spoon of Mei Yen Pow­der,” she writes, “use 2/3 tsp of the dry recipe (above) mixed with 1/8 tsp of soy sauce.”

Hem­ing­way’s wid­ow, Mary, pub­lished the same basic recipe in 1966 in the sixth vol­ume of the Wom­an’s Day Ency­clo­pe­dia of Cook­ery. The one-pound of beef was intend­ed for only two serv­ings. For more on Hem­ing­way’s ham­burg­er recipe and his culi­nary tastes, includ­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing list of gourmet foods he had shipped from New York to his home in Cuba, be sure to read Tan’s arti­cle at the Paris Review.

Update: You can also now enjoy Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

How to Actu­al­ly Cook Sal­vador Dali’s Sur­re­al­ist Recipes: Cray­fish, Prawns, and Spit­ted Eggs

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The Original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Manuscript, Handwritten & Illustrated By Lewis Carroll (1864)

in Art, Literature | July 2nd, 2024

On a sum­mer day in 1862, a tall, stam­mer­ing Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty math­e­mati­cian named Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son took a boat trip up the Riv­er Thames, accom­pa­nied by a col­league and the three young daugh­ters of uni­ver­si­ty chan­cel­lor Hen­ry Lid­dell. To stave off tedi­um dur­ing the five-mile jour­ney, Dodg­son regaled the group with a sto­ry of a bored girl named Alice who finds adven­ture in the most unex­pect­ed places. By the day’s end, Liddell’s mid­dle daugh­ter, also named Alice, was so enthralled by this account that she implored the math­e­mati­cian to write the sto­ry down. Some three years lat­er, Dodg­son would pub­lish Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land under the nom de plume of Lewis Car­roll (the pen name is an Angli­cized ver­sion of “Car­o­lus Ludovi­cus,” the Latinized form of Charles Lud­widge). The peren­ni­al children’s read was imme­di­ate­ly pop­u­lar, count­ing Oscar Wilde and Queen Vic­to­ria among its ardent fans, and has nev­er been out of print since its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion in 1865.

Alice’s Adven­tures Under Ground, the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the book that Car­roll pre­sent­ed to Alice Lid­dell in 1864, is present­ly housed in the British Library, which has gra­cious­ly made it freely avail­able online. You can view it here. The hand­writ­ten vol­ume includes 37 crisp ink illus­tra­tions, all per­son­al­ly drawn by Dodg­son. Dis­cern­ing Alice read­ers will notice that these illus­tra­tions dif­fer from the icon­ic images (and, to my eyes, very much supe­ri­or) cre­at­ed by famed Punch mag­a­zine polit­i­cal car­toon­ist John Ten­niel.

Title and illus­tra­tions aside, the orig­i­nal man­u­script is con­sid­er­ably slim­mer than the final ver­sion, con­tain­ing rough­ly 12,000 few­er words.

Those wish­ing to revis­it Alice’s adven­tures can do so at the British Library’s site.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

Meryl Streep Shrooms Her Way Through Mod­ern Alice in Won­der­land

The Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862, and Our Favorite Cul­ture Links on the Web

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Watch Patti Smith Read from Virginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Surviving Recording of Woolf’s Voice

in Literature, Music | June 23rd, 2024

In the video above, poet, artist, Nation­al Book Award win­ner, and “god­moth­er of punk” Pat­ti Smith reads a selec­tion from Vir­ginia Woolf’s 1931 exper­i­men­tal nov­el The Waves, accom­pa­nied on piano and gui­tar by her daugh­ter Jesse and son Jack­son. The “read­ing” marked the open­ing of “Land 250,” a 2008 exhi­bi­tion of Smith’s pho­tog­ra­phy and art­work from 1965 to 2007, at the Fon­da­tion Carti­er pour l’art con­tem­po­rain in Paris.

I put the word “read­ing” in quotes above because Smith only reads a very short pas­sage from Woolf’s nov­el. The rest of the dra­mat­ic per­for­mance is Smith in her own voice, pos­si­bly impro­vis­ing, pos­si­bly recit­ing her homage to Woolf—occasioned by the fact that the start of the exhi­bi­tion fell on the 67th anniver­sary of Woolf’s death by sui­cide. Of Woolf’s death, Smith says, “I do not think of this as sad. I just think that it’s the day that Vir­ginia Woolf decid­ed to say good­bye. So we are not cel­e­brat­ing the day, we are sim­ply acknowl­edg­ing that this is the day. If I had a title to call tonight, I would call it ‘Wave.’ We are wav­ing to Vir­ginia.”

Smith’s choice of a title for the evening is sig­nif­i­cant. She titled her 1979 album Wave, her last record before she went into semi-retire­ment in the 80s. And her exhi­bi­tion includ­ed a set of beau­ti­ful pho­tographs tak­en at Woolf’s Sus­sex retreat, Monk’s House. Her per­for­mance seems like an unusu­al con­flu­ence of voic­es, but Woolf might have enjoyed it, since so much of her work explored the unit­ing of sep­a­rate minds, over the bar­ri­ers of space and time. While Smith express­es her indebt­ed­ness to Woolf, one won­ders what the upper-class Blooms­bury daugh­ter of a well-con­nect­ed and artis­tic fam­i­ly would have thought of the work­ing-class punk-poet from the Low­er East Side? It’s impos­si­ble to say, of course, but some­how it’s fit­ting that they meet through Woolf’s The Waves.

Woolf’s nov­el (she called it a “play­po­em”) blends the voic­es of six char­ac­ters, but Woolf didn’t think of them as char­ac­ters at all, but as aspects of a greater, ever-shift­ing whole. As she once wrote in a let­ter:

The six char­ac­ters were sup­posed to be one. I’m get­ting old myself now—I shall be fifty next year; and I come to feel more and more how dif­fi­cult it is to col­lect one­self into one Vir­ginia; even though the spe­cial Vir­ginia in whose body I live for the moment is vio­lent­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to all sorts of sep­a­rate feel­ings. There­fore I want­ed to give the sense of con­ti­nu­ity.

Spec­u­la­tion over Woolf’s men­tal health aside, her ref­er­ences to voic­es in her let­ters, diaries, and in her elo­quent let­ter to Leonard Woolf before she died, were also state­ments of her craft—which embraced the inner voic­es of oth­ers, not let­ting any one voice be dom­i­nant. I like to think Woolf would have been delight­ed with the fierce­ness of Smith—in some ways, Vir­ginia Woolf antic­i­pat­ed punk, and Pat­ti Smith. In her own voice below, you can hear her describe the words of the Eng­lish lan­guage as “irreclaimable vagabonds,” who “if you start a Soci­ety for Pure Eng­lish, they will show their resent­ment by start­ing anoth­er for impure Eng­lish…. They are high­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic.”

The record­ing below comes from an essay pub­lished in a col­lec­tion—The Death of the Moth and Oth­er Essays—the year after Woolf’s death. The talk was called “Crafts­man­ship,” part of a BBC radio broad­cast from 1937, and it is the only sur­viv­ing record­ing of Woolf’s voice.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Pat­ti Smith on Vir­ginia Woolf’s Cane, Charles Dick­ens’ Pen & Oth­er Cher­ished Lit­er­ary Tal­is­mans

Pat­ti Smith’s Polaroids of Arti­facts from Vir­ginia Woolf, Arthur Rim­baud, Rober­to Bolaño & More

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Let­ter to Robert Map­plethor­pe, Call­ing Him “the Most Beau­ti­ful Work of All”

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

 Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Watch the Earliest-Known Charles Dickens Film: The Death of Poor Joe

in Film, Literature | June 17th, 2024

A lit­tle over a decade ago, a cura­tor at the British Film Insti­tute (BFI) dis­cov­ered the old­est sur­viv­ing film fea­tur­ing a Charles Dick­ens char­ac­ter, “The Death of Poor Joe.” The silent film, direct­ed by George Albert Smith in 1900, brings to life Dick­ens’ char­ac­ter Jo, the cross­ing sweep­er from Bleak House. Pri­or to this find, the title of the old­est known Dick­ens film belonged to Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost, which pre­miered in Novem­ber 1901.

Pro­vid­ing more con­text for the film, the BFI writes:

This trag­ic short film is based on the stage pro­duc­tion of Poor Jo the Cross­ing Sweep­er, which itself adapt­ed one of the most affect­ing sto­ries in Dick­ens’ epic nov­el Bleak House. This short film is very much an adap­ta­tion of the stage ver­sion, in which a fol­low-spot recre­at­ed the night watch­man’s lamp. As Joe dies, nev­er hav­ing been taught to pray, the light also rep­re­sents the redemp­tive light of heav­en.

The char­ac­ter of Joe was pop­u­larised in the 19th cen­tu­ry by actress Jen­nie Lee, who toured her per­for­mance around Europe and the USA. Here Joe is played by Lau­ra Bay­ley and the Night-watch­man by Tom Green. Both actors were reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tors with the Brighton-based film­mak­er GA Smith (Bay­ley was his wife).

You can watch the film, cour­tesy of BFI, above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ Clas­sic Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

Watch L’Inferno (1911), Italy’s First Fea­ture Film and Per­haps the Finest Adap­ta­tion of Dante’s Clas­sic

Watch Very First Film Adap­ta­tions of Shakespeare’s Plays: King John, The Tem­pest, Richard III & More (1899–1936)

Franken­stein Hits the Sil­ver Screen (1910)

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Hear Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buckley, Christopher Walken, Marianne Faithful & More

in Film, Literature, Music | June 13th, 2024

In 1849, a lit­tle over 175 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was found dead in a Bal­ti­more gut­ter under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances very like­ly relat­ed to vio­lent elec­tion fraud. It was an igno­min­ious end to a life marked by hard­ship, alco­holism, and loss. After strug­gling for years as the first Amer­i­can writer to try and make a liv­ing from his art, and fail­ing in sev­er­al pub­lish­ing ven­tures and posi­tions, Poe achieved few of his aims, bare­ly get­ting by finan­cial­ly and only man­ag­ing to attract a little—often negative—notice for now-famous poems like “The Raven.” Con­tem­po­raries like Ralph Wal­do Emer­son dis­par­aged the poem and a lat­er gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers, includ­ing William But­ler Yeats, pro­nounced him “vul­gar.”

But of course, as we know, a coun­ter­cur­rent of Poe appre­ci­a­tion took hold among writ­ers, artists, and film­mak­ers inter­est­ed in mys­tery, hor­ror, and the supernatural—to such a degree that in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, near­ly every artist even pass­ing­ly asso­ci­at­ed with dark­er themes has inter­pret­ed Poe as a rite of pas­sage. We’ve fea­tured a read­ing of “The Raven” by the often-sin­is­ter Christo­pher Walken.

At the top of the post, you can hear anoth­er ver­sion of the Queens-born actor read­ing Poe’s best-known work, a poem designed to pro­duce what the author called a “uni­ty of effect” with its incan­ta­to­ry rep­e­ti­tions. This record­ing comes from a col­lec­tion of celebri­ty Poe read­ings called Closed on Account of Rabies, which also fea­tures such unique takes on the clas­sic hor­ror writer’s work as that above, “The Tell-Tale Heart” as read by Iggy Pop.

Just above, hear a less­er-known poem by Poe called “Ulalume” read by Jeff Buck­ley, with an accom­pa­ny­ing sound­track of low, puls­ing, vague­ly West­ern-inspired music that well suits Buckley’s for­mal, rhyth­mic recita­tion. The use of music on this album has divid­ed many Poe fans, and admit­ted­ly, some tracks work bet­ter than oth­ers. On Buckley’s “Ulalume,” the music height­ens ten­sion and pro­vides a per­fect atmos­phere for imag­in­ing “the misty mid region of Weir,” its “ghoul-haunt­ed wood­land,” and the “sco­ri­ac rivers” of lava pour­ing from the poet’s heart. On Mar­i­anne Faithful’s read­ing of “Annabelle Lee,” below, a score of keen­ing synths can seem over­wrought and unnec­es­sary.

The remain­der of the 1997 album, which you can pur­chase here, treats us to read­ings from 80s goth-rock stars Dia­man­da Galas and Gavin Fri­day, Bad Lieu­tenant direc­tor Abel Fer­rara, Blondie singer Deb­bie Har­ry, and grav­el-voiced New Orleans blues­man Dr. John, among oth­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman & More

Why Should You Read Edgar Allan Poe? An Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Sto­ries and Poems

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Download Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pioneering Pulp Horror Magazine Features Original Stories by Lovecraft, Bradbury & Many More

in Literature, Magazines | June 11th, 2024

We live in an era of genre. Browse through TV shows of the last decade to see what I mean: Hor­ror, sci-fi, fan­ta­sy, super­heroes, futur­is­tic dystopias…. Take a casu­al glance at the bur­geon­ing glob­al film fran­chis­es or mer­chan­dis­ing empires. Where in ear­li­er decades, hor­ror and fan­ta­sy inhab­it­ed the teenage domain of B‑movies and com­ic books, they’ve now become dom­i­nant forms of pop­u­lar nar­ra­tive for adults. Telling the sto­ry of how this came about might involve the kind of lengthy soci­o­log­i­cal analy­sis on which peo­ple stake aca­d­e­m­ic careers. And find­ing a con­ve­nient begin­ning for that sto­ry wouldn’t be easy.

Do we start with The Cas­tle of Otran­to, the first Goth­ic nov­el, which opened the door for such books as Drac­u­la and Franken­stein? Or do we open with Edgar Allan Poe, whose macabre short sto­ries and poems cap­ti­vat­ed the public’s imag­i­na­tion and inspired a mil­lion imi­ta­tors? Maybe. But if we real­ly want to know when the most pop­ulist, mass-mar­ket hor­ror and fan­ta­sy began—the kind that inspired tele­vi­sion shows from the Twi­light Zone to the X‑Files to Super­nat­ur­al to The Walk­ing Dead—we need to start with H.P. Love­craft, and with the pulpy mag­a­zine that pub­lished his bizarre sto­ries, Weird Tales.

08_wtcover_1949_07

Debut­ing in 1923, Weird Tales, writes The Pulp Mag­a­zines Project, pro­vid­ed “a venue for fic­tion, poet­ry and non-fic­tion on top­ics rang­ing from ghost sto­ries to alien inva­sions to the occult.” The mag­a­zine intro­duced its read­ers to past mas­ters like Poe, Bram Stok­er, and H.G. Wells, and to the lat­est weird­ness from Love­craft and con­tem­po­raries like August Der­leth, Ash­ton Smith, Cather­ine L. Moore, Robert Bloch, and Robert E. Howard (cre­ator of Conan the Bar­bar­ian).

In the magazine’s first few decades, you wouldn’t have thought it very influ­en­tial. Founder Jacob Clark Hen­nen­berg­er strug­gled to turn a prof­it, and the mag­a­zine “nev­er had a large cir­cu­la­tion.” But no mag­a­zine is per­haps bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the explo­sion of pulp genre fic­tion that swept through the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and even­tu­al­ly gave birth to the jug­ger­nauts of Mar­vel and DC.

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Weird Tales is wide­ly accept­ed by cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans as “the first pulp mag­a­zine to spe­cial­ize in super­nat­ur­al and occult fic­tion,” points out The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion (though, as we not­ed before, an obscure Ger­man title, Der Orchideen­garten, tech­ni­cal­ly got there ear­li­er). And while the mag­a­zine may not have been wide­ly pop­u­lar, as the Vel­vet Under­ground was to the rapid spread of var­i­ous sub­gen­era of rock in the sev­en­ties, so was Weird Tales to hor­ror and fan­ta­sy fan­dom. Every­one who read it either start­ed their own mag­a­zine or fan­club, or began writ­ing their own “weird fic­tion”—Lovecraft’s term for the kind of super­nat­ur­al hor­ror he churned out for sev­er­al decades.

Fans of Love­craft can read and down­load scans of his sto­ries and let­ters to the edi­tor pub­lished in Weird Tales at the links below, brought to us by The Love­craft eZine (via SFFau­dio).

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Weird Tales, Sep­tem­ber 1923 – Sep­tem­ber 1923

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Weird Tales, Octo­ber 1923 – Octo­ber 1923

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Weird Tales, Jan­u­ary 1924 – Jan­u­ary 1924

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Weird Tales, March 1924 – March 1924

Impris­oned With The Pharaohs – May/June/July 1924

Hyp­nos – May/June/July 1924

The Tomb – Jan­u­ary 1926

The Ter­ri­ble Old Man – August 1926

Yule Hor­ror – Decem­ber 1926

The White Ship – March 1927

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Weird Tales, Feb­ru­ary 1928 – Feb­ru­ary 1928

The Dun­wich Hor­ror – April 1929

The Tree – August 1938

Fun­gi From Yug­goth Part XIII: The Port – Sep­tem­ber 1946

Fun­gi From Yug­goth Part X: The Pigeon-Fly­ers – Jan­u­ary 1947

Fun­gi From Yug­goth Part XXVI: The Famil­iars – Jan­u­ary 1947

The City – July 1950

Hallowe’en In A Sub­urb – Sep­tem­ber 1952

Fans of ear­ly pulp hor­ror and fantasy—–or grad stu­dents writ­ing their the­sis on the evo­lu­tion of genre fiction—can view and down­load dozens of issues of Weird Tales, from the 20s to the 50s, at the links below:

The Inter­net Archive has dig­i­tized copies from the 1920s and 1930s.

The Pulp Mag­a­zine Project hosts HTML, Flip­Book, and PDF ver­sions of Weird Tales issues from 1936 to 1939

This site has PDF scans of indi­vid­ual Weird Tales sto­ries from the 40s and 50s, includ­ing work by Love­craft, Ray Brad­bury, Dorothy Quick, Robert Bloch, and Theodor Stur­geon.

And to learn much more about the his­to­ry of the mag­a­zine, you may wish to beg, bor­row, or steal a copy of the pri­cy col­lec­tion of essays, The Unique Lega­cy of Weird Tales: The Evo­lu­tion of Mod­ern Fan­ta­sy and Hor­ror.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the First Hor­ror & Fan­ta­sy Mag­a­zine, Der Orchideen­garten, and Its Bizarre Art­work (1919–1921)

Enter a Huge Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the World’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Launched in 1926

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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