Black Mask (magazine) - Contributing Authors

Contributing Authors

Early Black Mask contributors of note included J. S. Fletcher, Vincent Starrett, and Herman Petersen. Shaw, following up on a promising lead from one of the early issues, promptly turned the magazine into an outlet for the growing school of naturalistic crime writers led by Carroll John Daly. Daly's private detective Race Williams was a rough and ready character with a sharp tongue, and established the model for many later acerbic private eyes.

Black Mask later published the profoundly influential Dashiell Hammett, creator of Sam Spade and The Continental Op, and other hardboiled writers who came in his wake, such as Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Paul Cain, Frederick Nebel, Frederick C. Davis, Raoul F. Whitfield, Theodore Tinsley, W.T. Ballard, Dwight V. Babcock, and Roger Torrey. Author George Harmon Coxe created "Casey, Crime Photographer", for the magazine, which became a media franchise with novels, films, radio, comic book tie-ins, television, and legitimate theatre. Black Mask's covers were usually painted by artists Fred Craft or J. W. Schlaikjer, while Shaw gave the artist Arthur Rodman Bowker a monopoly over all Black Mask interior illustrations. Although primarily known for male contributors, Black Mask also published a number of women crime writers, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Katherine Brocklebank, Sally Dixon Wright, Florence M. Pettee, Marion O'Hearn, Kay Krausse, Frances Beck, Tiah Devitt and Dorothy Dunn. The magazine was hugely successful, and many of the writers, such as Hugh B. Cave, who appeared in its pages went onto greater commercial and critical success.

Although crime fiction made up most of the magazine's content, Black Mask also published some Western and general adventure fiction.