Farnsworth Wright

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Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940) was the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the magazine's heyday.

Wright, a veteran of World War I, was working as a music critic for the Chicago Herald and Examiner when he began his association with Weird Tales, founded in 1923.^[1] At first serving as chief manuscript reader,^[2] he replaced founding editor Edwin Baird in 1924 when the latter was fired by publisher J. C. Henneberger.^[3]

Wright's editorship of the magazine, which lasted until 1940, is considered the magazine's golden age, when it was regularly publishing such authors as 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,^[4] Howard's "The Frost Giant's Daughter"^[5] and Smith's "The Seven Geases" (which Wright dismissed as just "one geas after another").^[6]

Wright (nicknamed "Plato" by his writers) was also noteworthy for starting the commercial careers of three important fantasy artists: Margaret Brundage, Virgil Finlay, and Hannes Bok. Each of the three made their first sale to, and had their work first appear in, Weird Tales.

Wright developed Parkinson's disease in 1921; by 1930, he was unable to sign his own letters. His failing health forced him to step down as editor in 1940, and he died later that year.^[7]

[edit] References

Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
Charles Hoffman and Marc A. Cerasini, "The Strange Case of Robert Ervin Howard", The Horror of It All, Robert M. Price, ed.
S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia
Clark Ashton Smith, The Book of Hyperborea, Will Murray, ed.