I closed the last series with a cover showing a peacock. That made me think of a further entry on the peacock covers of Weird Tales. I wish I could say that this is a happier topic than the previous several series, but there's more human sacrifice and bondage here.
There are four peacock covers in Weird Tales, a fair number for a subject you wouldn't ordinarily associate with weird fiction, although Flannery O'Conner, who wrote what might in a broad sense be called weird fiction or at the very least gothic fiction, was known for raising peacocks. I suppose the association between peacocks and weird fiction has to do with the association between peacocks and the Orient: very often, weird stories are set in that part of the world, or its villains originate there.
There are four peacock covers in Weird Tales, a fair number for a subject you wouldn't ordinarily associate with weird fiction, although Flannery O'Conner, who wrote what might in a broad sense be called weird fiction or at the very least gothic fiction, was known for raising peacocks. I suppose the association between peacocks and weird fiction has to do with the association between peacocks and the Orient: very often, weird stories are set in that part of the world, or its villains originate there.
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| Weird Tales, November 1926. Cover story: "The Peacock's Shadow" by E. Hoffman Price. Cover art by E.M. Stevenson. |
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| Weird Tales, August 1932. Cover story: "Bride of the Peacock" by E. Hoffman Price. Cover art by T. Wyatt Nelson. |
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| Weird Tales, November 1937. Cover story "Living Buddhess" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. |
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| Weird Tales, November 1943. Cover story: "The Valley of the Assassins" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by A.R. Tilburne. The artist Tilburne specialized in depicting animals. It's no surprise that his peacock would be the most prominent on the cover of Weird Tales. |
I still have a few categories to go in completing this series on the cover themes and subjects in Weird Tales, but I would like to take a break from it and get back to the biographies of the writers and artists who contributed to "The Unique Magazine." That's how I will start off the month of February 2017 after a series on the origins of zombies in America.
Text copyright 2017 Terence E. Hanley