Algernon Blackwood on a Tobacco Card

Weird writers occasionally pop up in the most unlikely places. Algernon Blackwood, who garnered vastly more recognition for his weird tales in his lifetime than poor H.P. Lovecraft, actually appeared on a tobacco card from the 1930s. This shard of ephemera comes from a couple sources online, such as this auction currently going on at magiccastleauctions.com for the full set of cards featuring various British entertainers. E-bay also had an auction for this old set back in September, which closed at $5.00. A picture with the card featuring Blackwood is shown above (furthest card on the top right), while a larger image of the card's depiction of the weird author is posted below. It's fairly stunning that Blackwood was chosen to rub shoulders with magicians, zookeepers, and singers as an icon of British culture in the 1930s.


This item demonstrates the prominence Algernon Blackwood gained in British mainstream culture before his death in 1951. Unlike Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, and many other luminaries of the weird, Blackwood gained notoriety not only from his strange stories, but from his time as a broadcaster on early British radio. Though we no longer see Blackwood's face printed on everyday items like this tobacco card set in Britain or elsewhere, the weird writer has left an eternal stamp on a literary genre coalescing to new heights in his own day. Blackwood's exposition of Nature as an overwhelming force of malevolence and magnificence has never been replicated in the same way by his near contemporaries nor his successors in weird literature. Neither H.P. Lovecraft's "Cosmicism" nor Arthur Machen's pre-Christian terrors pack the terrible and enchanting punch of a Blackwood story like "The Willows" or "Ancient Sorceries." Indeed, it's for good reason that H.P. Lovecraft considered "The Willows" the finest weird tale ever written in the 1930s.

Today, Blackwood's works live on through the mettle of his own odd literary legacy as well as association with H.P. Lovecraft and more recent horror writers. It's fitting that we should find him peering out at us on an artifact of mid century Britain. Like the skillful atmosphere of his work, we have only subtle hints into the mysterious nature of the author's gyrating popularity among past and present weird readers.

-Grim Blogger