Harold Ward

Harold Ward, born in 1879, wrote for the pulps under his own name and at least one pseudonym. His career connected the new Weird Tales with established detective and adventure magazines: “The Man in the Black Mask” appeared in Black Mask in 1920, and “The Skull” opened the first issue of Weird Tales in March 1923. “The Bodymaster,” the story credited to Ward in the following issue, was one of many later contributions to the magazine.

Ward’s Weird Tales bibliography runs from 1923 to 1937 and includes fifteen stories. In the mid-1930s he also wrote the Doctor Death adventures for the magazine of that name using “Zorro.” The bibliography places him among the working pulp writers whose output was built from short assignments across multiple titles, rather than from one enduring book series. Ward died in 1950. The April 1923 byline is one small entry in a record that spans horror, detective fiction and adventure, and it is the source for the author credit attached to The Bodymaster here.