Farnsworth Wright

Farnsworth Wright (July 29, 1888 – June 12, 1940) was an American poet and editor who was the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the magazine's heyday, editing 179 issues from November 1924 to March 1940. Jack Williamson called Wright "the first great fantasy editor". He was editor from 1925 to May 1950.

Wright was born in California, and educated at the University of Nevada and the University of Washington. A Washington journalism student, he spent three years on the staff of the University of Washington Daily, ending as managing editor. He acted as managing editor of The Seattle Star on April 25, 1914, when twenty journalism students were handed responsibility for the paper for a day. An honors student, he graduated with a B.A. in journalism in 1914. At the university, he was active in clubs, including serving as president of the Social Democratic Club.

Wright experienced several personal tragedies in his early life of which he would never speak. For example, on July 27, 1913, while bathing in the ocean off Westport, Washington, Wright and his University of Washington roommate, John P. Rauen, were caught in eddying currents. Ironically, Rauen, a "good swimmer," drowned while Wright, who couldn't swim, was rescued "after great difficulties."

His first job was as a reporter with the Seattle Sun, but he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1917 and served in the infantry in World War I. Wright "served a year as interpreter with the American army." In one reference, his duty was described as "interpreter in the town major's office in Roeze."

Wright's mother taught music and inspired in him his zeal for the classics and for art. For a number of years, he wrote music criticism for Musical America. His music criticism overlapped his overseas duty and, at least into 1928, his editorship of Weird Tales. Wright loved poetry and later encouraged its appearance in Weird Tales.

Wright was working as a music critic for the Chicago Herald and Examiner when he began his association with Weird Tales, founded in 1923. At first serving as chief manuscript reader, he replaced founding editor Edwin Baird in 1924 when the latter was fired by publisher J. C. Henneberger.

During Wright's editorship of Weird Tales (WT), which lasted until 1940, the magazine regularly published the notable authors H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Yet Wright had a strained relationship with all three writers, rejecting major works by them — such as Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Howard's "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," and Smith's "The Seven Geases" (which Wright dismissed as just "one geas after another"). He could be both discouraging and encouraging with equal lack of logic. His preference for shorter fiction particularly led him to discourage Lovecraft's, whose best works emerged at longer lengths during the early 1930s. Nevertheless, as Mike Ashley has put it, "Wright developed WT from a relatively routine horror pulp magazine to create what has become a legend."

Wright's wide tastes allowed for an extravagance of fiction, from the Sword and Sorcery of Robert E. Howard, the cosmic fiction of Lovecraft, the occult detective stories of Seabury Quinn, the chinoiseries of E. Hoffmann Price and Frank Owen, the terror tales of Paul Ernst and the space operas and pandimensional adventures of Edmond Hamilton and Nictzin Dyalhis.