1945 ISSUE OF WEIRD TALES, WITH BRADBURY'S SHORT STORY "THE DEAD MAN," SIGNED BY BRADBURY ON THE FRONT WRAPPER

(BRADBURY, Ray). Weird Tales—July, 1945. New York: Weird Tales, 1945. Quarto, original pictorial wrappers. $850.

July, 1945 issue of Weird Tales, containing Bradbury's short story "The Dead Man"—and featuring Bradbury's name on the cover—signed in black sharpie by Bradbury on the front wrapper.

The legendary Bradbury was "as influenced by George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare as he was by Jules Verne… Bradbury's poetically drawn and atmospheric fictions—horror, fantasy, shadowy American gothics—explored life's secret corners" (Los Angeles Times). "Evocative, poetic and suffused with youthful wonder, Bradbury's tales broke with pulp conventions in their style and approach to the fantastic" (Clute & Grant, 132). Between 1942 and 1948 Bradbury published seven short stories in Weird Tales. Of his early appearances in Weird and other pulps, Bradbury has said, "My first story for Weird Tales was an unsuccessful narrative 'The Candle,' using familiar plot, stock characters, and a predictable climax… It was only when I learned to write from my own experience and asked myself 'What have you got that is new to give to the field?' that my stories began to shape themselves with some degree of originality… After that first sale, I began to find myself, and I began to write the more unusual type of weird story based on my own encounters with life" (Eller & Touponce, Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, 54). With pictorial cover art by Lee Brown Coye.

Light edge-wear to wrappers. A near-fine copy, scarce signed.