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Joshi, S T

Entry updated 12 August 2024. Tagged: Author, Critic, Editor.

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(1958-    ) Writer, critic, publisher and editor best known for his bibliographic and critical work on H P Lovecraft. Born in India, S T Joshi emigrated with his family to Illinois in 1963. After graduating from Brown University in 1980 and obtaining an MA degree there in 1982, Joshi left two years into his PhD under a Paul Elmer More fellowship in classical philosophy and in 1984 obtained an editorial position at Chelsea House Publishers, where he worked closely with Harold Bloom. In 2003 Joshi received the Distinguished Scholarship award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and the 2005 World Fantasy Award for professional scholarship.

In collaboration with Marc A Michaud, Joshi compiled his first book of Lovecraft's Uncollected Prose and Poetry (coll 1978 chap), the first reprinting of these short works. In 1979 Joshi began editing the scholarly journal Lovecraft Studies, and in 1986 established a companion magazine, Studies in Weird Fiction. In 1991 he co-edited with Stefan R Dziemianowicz and Michael A Morrison the journal Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction. His first critical work on Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, was published in 1980. In 1981 Joshi's bibliographic work H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography was published, a landmark in the field. Joshi began to compile and collate Lovecraft's fiction, poetry and essays against his manuscripts and first publications of his work in the winter of 1976-1977 and agreed to edit collections of Lovecraft's work for Arkham House. These works appeared as The Dunwich Horror and Others (coll 1984), At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (coll 1985), Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (coll 1986), and The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (coll 1989). Joshi wrote A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft (1996), which was intended to replace his earlier Starmont Reader's guide H.P. Lovecraft (1982 chap). Joshi continues to edit collections of Lovecraft's work, the most recent being annotated editions of The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (coll 1999), The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (coll 2001) and The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (coll 2004) Joshi's biography of Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), won the 1996 Bram Stoker award and the 1997 British Fantasy Award.

In 1987 Joshi's interest expanded to include work on writers who had influenced Lovecraft, such as Arthur Machen and Lord Dunsany, which eventually culminated in what Joshi regards as his greatest work apart from his biography of Lovecraft, The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft (1990). This work was complemented in 2001 by The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction, which examines weird fiction from the 1950s to 2000. An extended bibliography of Arkham House publications, Sixty Years of Arkham House (1999) won a Locus Award. In collaboration with Darrell Schweitzer, Joshi compiled Lord Dunsany: A Bibliography (1993) and independently wrote the critical study Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (1995). Joshi's interest in Lovecraft also extends to writers influenced by him; he compiled a bibliography on Ramsey Campbell with Stefan Dziemianowicz and Campbell himself, titled The Core of Ramsey Campbell: A Bibliography & Reader's Guide (1995 chap), and wrote the first monograph on Campbell's work, Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction (2001), much augmented as Ramsey Campbell: Master of Weird Fiction (2021). In 2006 Joshi shared the International Horror Guild's award for nonfiction for his three-volume Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia (2005 3vols) with Stefan Dziemianowicz, and the 2008 nonfiction award for the two-volume Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares (2006).

While Joshi has recently turned his attention to writers such as Ambrose Bierce, George Sterling and H L Mencken, assembling with David E Schultz Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources (1999), he continues to work on writers of the weird tradition of fantasy. He compiled a three volume edition of Clark Ashton Smith's Complete Poetry and Translations (coll 2007) and continues to edit editions of H P Lovecraft's and Machen's work, an example of the latter being The White People and Other Weird Stories (coll 2003). [CPa]

see also: Horror in SF.

Sunand Tryambak Joshi

born Poona, India: 22 June 1958

works (selected)

nonfiction

works as editor

series

Black Wings

Madness of Cthulhu

individual titles as editor

single-author collections as editor

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