, Although the term "weird fiction" did not appear until the 20th century,
Edgar Allan Poe is often regarded as the pioneering author of weird fiction. Poe was identified by Lovecraft as the first author of a distinct type of
supernatural fiction different from traditional Gothic literature, and later commentators on the term have also suggested Poe was the first "weird fiction" writer. The Irish magazine ''
The Freeman's Journal, in an 1898 review of Dracula'' by
Bram Stoker, described the novel as "wild and weird" and not Gothic. Weinstock has suggested there was a period of "Old Weird Fiction" that lasted from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Other pioneering British weird fiction writers included
Algernon Blackwood,
William Hope Hodgson,
Lord Dunsany, and
M. R. James. The American
pulp magazine Weird Tales published many such stories in the United States from March 1923 to September 1954. The magazine's editor
Farnsworth Wright often used the term "weird fiction" to describe the type of material that the magazine published. The writers who wrote for the magazine
Weird Tales are thus closely identified with the weird fiction subgenre, especially
H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith,
Fritz Leiber and
Robert Bloch. and
Unknown Worlds (edited by
John W. Campbell).
H. P. Lovecraft popularised the term "weird fiction" in his essays. Although Lovecraft was one of the few early 20th-century writers to describe his work as "weird fiction", and
Ramsey Campbell, ==Notable authors==