Wright published some science fiction, along with the fantasy and horror, partly because when Weird Tales was launched, no magazines were specializing in science fiction, but he continued this policy even after the launch of magazines such as Amazing Stories in 1926.
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Weird Tales ceased publication in 1954, but since then, numerous attempts have been made to relaunch the magazine, starting in 1973.
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Two years later Weird Tales' bank was still having financial problems, and payment to authors was being substantially delayed.
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Price was increased to 20 cents in 1947, and again to 25 cents in 1949, but it was not only Weird Tales that was suffering—the entire pulp industry was in decline.
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Weird Tales acquired the rights to both Weird Tales and Short Stories, and hoped to bring both magazines back.
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Weird Tales abandoned a plan to restart Weird Tales in 1962, using reprints from the original magazine, after being advised by Sam Moskowitz that there was little market for weird and horror fiction at the time.
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New version of Weird Tales finally appeared from Renown Publications, in April 1973, edited by Moskowitz.
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Weird Tales was more lastingly revived at the end of the 1980s by George H Scithers, John Gregory Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer, who formed Terminus Publishing, based in Philadelphia, and licensed the rights from Weinberg.
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In early 2007, Wildside announced a revamp of Weird Tales, naming Stephen H Segal the editorial and creative director and later recruiting Ann VanderMeer as the new fiction editor.
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Weird Tales added "I must confess that the main motive in establishing Weird Tales was to give the writer free rein to express his innermost feelings in a manner befitting great literature".
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Edwin Baird, the first editor of Weird Tales, was not an ideal choice for the job as he disliked horror stories; his expertise was in crime fiction, and most of the material he acquired was bland and unoriginal.
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Robert Weinberg, in his history of Weird Tales, agrees with Ashley that the quality of Baird's issues was poor, but comments that some good stories were published: "it was just that the percentage of such stories was dismally small".
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Weird Tales adds that from the May 1923 issue "the covers plunged into a pit of mediocrity".
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Robert Bloch, later to become well known as the writer of the movie Psycho, began publishing stories in Weird Tales in 1935; he was a fan of Lovecraft's work, and asked Lovecraft's permission to include Lovecraft as a character in one of his stories, and to kill the character off.
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Weird Tales' subtitle was "The Unique Magazine", and Wright's story selections were as varied as the subtitle promised; he was willing to print strange or bizarre stories with no hint of the fantastic if they were unusual enough to fit in the magazine.
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Weird Tales published "The Infidel's Daughter" by Price, a satire of the Ku Klux Klan, which drew an angry letter and a cancelled subscription from a Klan member.
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Except for a couple of short-lived magazines such as Strange Tales and Tales of Magic and Mystery, and a weak challenge from Ghost Stories, all between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, Weird Tales had little competition for most of Wright's sixteen years as editor.
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Leiber did eventually sell several stories to Weird Tales, beginning with "The Automatic Pistol", which appeared in May 1940.
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Weird Tales included a letters column, titled "The Eyrie", for most of its existence, and during Wright's time as editor it was usually filled with long and detailed letters.
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Unknown published many successful humorous fantasy stories, and McIlwraith responded by including some humorous material, but Weird Tales rates were less than Unknown, with predictable effects on quality.
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In 1940 the policy of reprinting horror and weird classics ceased, and Weird Tales began using the slogan "All Stories New – No Reprints".
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Weinberg suggests that this was a mistake, as Weird Tales readership appreciated getting access to classic stories "often mentioned but rarely found".
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Weird Tales regularly featured Fredric Brown, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Fritz Leiber, and Theodore Sturgeon.
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In May 1951 Weird Tales began to include reprints, in an attempt to reduce costs, but by that time the earlier issues of Weird Tales had been extensively mined for reprints by August Derleth's publishing venture, Arkham House, and as a result McIlwraith often reprinted lesser-known stories.
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Weird Tales paper was of very poor quality, which meant that the reproductions were poor, and along with the low pay rate for art this meant that many artists treated Weird Tales as a last resort for their work.
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Coye did a series of full-page illustrations for Weird Tales called "Weirdisms", which ran intermittently from November 1948 to July 1951.
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Weird Tales was one of the most important magazines in the fantasy field; in Ashley's view, it is "second only to Unknown in significance and influence".
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Weinberg argues that much of the material Weird Tales published would never have appeared if the magazine had not existed.
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Justin Everett and Jeffrey H Shanks, the editors of a recent scholarly collection of literary criticism focused on the magazine, argue that "Weird Tales functioned as a nexus point in the development of speculative fiction from which emerged the modern genres of fantasy and horror".
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Weird Tales was in pulp format for its entire first run except for the issues from May 1923 to April 1924, when it was a large pulp, and the last year, from September 1953 to September 1954, when it was a digest.
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Some early Terminus editions of Weird Tales were printed in hardcover format, in limited editions of 200 copies.
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Canadian edition of Weird Tales appeared from June 1935 to July 1936; all fourteen issues are thought to be identical to the U S issues of those dates, though "Printed in Canada" appeared on the cover, and in at least one case another text box was placed on the cover to conceal part of a nude figure.
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Weird Tales is widely collected, and many issues command very high prices.
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Issues with stories by Lovecraft or Howard are very highly sought-after, with the October 1923 issue, containing "Dagon", Lovecraft's first appearance in Weird Tales, fetching comparable prices to the first two issues.
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The other valuable recent issues are the hardback versions of the Terminus Weird Tales; Ashley gives prices of between £40 and £90, with some of the special author issues fetching a premium.
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