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Carl Richard Jacobi (10 July 1908 – 25 August 1997) was a pulp fiction writer who contributed frequently to Weird Tales. Three collections of his short stories were published by Arkham House. His story "The Aquarium", which first appeared in Arkham House's Dark Mind, Dark Heart (1962), was later included in Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (Fedogan & Bremer, 1992).
In addition to Weird Tales, Jacobi wrote horror fiction for pulp outlets like Thrilling, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Ghost Stories, Startling Stories, and Strange Stories. He also wrote pulp adventure and crime stories for Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, Top-Notch, Short Stories, The Skipper, Doc Savage and Dime Adventures Magazine. He wrote some stories in the space opera genre for science fiction magazines like Planet Stories.
He wrote under a variety of pseudonyms, including Philip Spayne, King Marling, James K. Vermont, Richard Carle, Matthew South, Stephen Benedict, and Jackson Cole.
Born in Minneapolis, Jacobi was an English major at the University of Minnesota from 1927-1930, where he met Donald Wandrei. In 1931, Wandrei introduced him to August Derleth, with whom he would correspond for 40 years.
Jacobi began writing professionally while still in college; his short story "Mive", which won a campus writing contest and was published in the college's Minnesota Quarterly (Fall 1928) before being resold to Weird Tales (January 1932), caught the attention of H. P. Lovecraft. He wrote to Jacobi, "I told [editor Farnsworth] Wright that I was glad to see at least one story whose weirdness of incident was made convincing by adequate emotional preparation and suitably developed atmosphere."
An omnibus collection of the best of Jacobi's weird fiction, edited by S. T. Joshi, was published by Centipede Press in 2014. A two-volume selection of Jacobi's work, also edited by Joshi, came out from Weird House Press in 2021.
Bibliography[]
Collections[]
- Revelations in Black (Arkham House, 1947)
- Portraits in Moonlight (Arkham House, 1964)
- Disclosures in Scarlet (Arkham House, 1972)
- East of Samarinda (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989)
- Smoke of the Snake (Fedogan & Bremer, 1994)
- Masters of the Weird Tale: Carl Jacobi (Centipede Press, 2014)
- Mive and Others: Best Weird Stories of Carl Jacobi Volume 1 (Weird House Press, 2021)
- Witches in the Cornfield: Best Weird Stories of Carl Jacobi Volume 2 (Weird House Press, 2021)