Definition of "lurid"

Speculating on why publishers rejected it, he wonders whether it was deemed too lurid at the time, especially since Steinbeck was then an unknown author.

2021 May 22, Dalya Alberge, “John Steinbeck’s estate urged to let the world read his shunned werewolf novel”, in The Observer‎

Fierce o'er their beauty blazed the lurid flame;

1729, James Thomson, Britannia

Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke / On the misty river-tide.

1855, Alfred Tennyson, “Maud”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], page 86

The great banths sniffed the unfamiliar odours, and then with a rush they broke past us with low growls, swarming across the gardens beneath the lurid light of the nearer moon.

1913 January–May, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Gods of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co.; republished as “Corridors of Peril”, in The Gods of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., 1918 September, page 85

a lurid plant with maroon leaves and pink flowers

1976, Ethnology