A nice collection from the “shudder pulps” is Selected Tales of Grim and Grue From the Horror Pulps. It was edited by Sheldon Jaffrey (1934-2003) and published by Bowling Green State University’s Popular Press in 1987. He had four works from Popular Press.
Now, I’m not a fan of “weird menace” or “shudder pulps.” Several major pulp authors wrote works for these pulps. This volume reprints two “novels,” along with six works of various lengths.
Most importantly, we get an excellent essay on the weird-menace pulps by Robert Kenneth Jones, who wrote the definitive work on this: Shudder Pulps: A History of the Weird Menace Magazines of the 1930s, which came out in 1975 from Fax Collector’s Edition, and was reprinted by Wildside Press.
This essay here first appeared in June 1972 in a booklet from Opar Press put out for Pulpcon 1: The Weird Menace. It provides a history of the weird-menace genre that started at Popular Publications under the editorship of Rogers Terrill in three pulps: Dime Mystery Magazine, Horror Stories, and Terror Tales in 1933. This would be picked up by other publishers such as Thrilling in their Thrilling Mysteries, Red Circle with Mystery Tales, and so forth.
In addition to the essay, there are two indexes.
Weird-menace pulps were marked by the hero being pitted against sadistic villains, with graphic scenes of torture and brutality. Different pulps each had their own slight twist on this.
Major authors included Wyatt Blassingame, Hugh B. Cave, Arthur Leo Zagat, and more. Some authors, struggling to find work, would write for this genre as nothing else was available.
As noted, there are eight works here. Almost all the authors here I know of from their non-weird-menace work. We get Blassingame, Cave, Wayne Rogers, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Arthur J. Burks, and the husband and wife team of Edith and Ejler Jacobson. All the works come from Popular Publications.
To be honest, I didn’t read any of these because, as I said, it’s not my cup of tea. If you are interested in weird menace and want a good sampler, this is it. The essay, combined with the works, is a great introduction to the genre. You can then move on to some of the other collections out there.
