Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - List of Books by S. T. Joshi

Sunand Tryambak Joshi (b. 22 June 1958 in Pune, India) ... known as S. T. Joshi ... is an award-winning Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction. Besides having written what critics such as Harold Bloom and Joyce Carol Oates consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (A Life, 1996), Joshi has prepared (with David E. Schultz) several annotated editions of works by Ambrose Bierce. He has also written on crime novelist John Dickson Carr and on Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood and M. R. James, and has edited collections of their works, as well as collections of the best work of several other weird writers. He is a significant bibliographer, having compiled bibliographies of Lovecraft, Bierce, Dunsany, Ramsey Campbell and William Hope Hodgson and (forthcoming) Ray Bradbury and Clark Ashton Smith. He has been general editor of the Horror Classics series for Dover Publications. Most recently he has turned his attention to collecting and editing the works of H. L. Mencken. He currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Literary criticism

Joshi discovered Lovecraft when he was 13 in the public library in Muncie, Indiana. He read L. Sprague de Camp's biography of Lovecraft on publication in 1975 and began thereafter to devote himself to the study of Lovecraft, guided in this by scholars such as Dirk W. Mosig, J. Vernon Shea and George Wetzel. He also wrote some Lovecraftian fiction such as the story "The Recurring Doom", which can be found in Robert M. Price's anthology Acolytes of Cthulhu.

Joshi elected to become a freshman at Brown University primarily because of the holdings of Lovecraft books and manuscripts in the John Hay Library. He later did graduate work at Princeton University. Having become a leading scholar of H.P. Lovecraft, he devoted years of research consulting manuscripts and early publications in preparing corrected editions of Lovecraft's collected fiction, revisions and miscellaneous writings in collaboration with Jim Turner for Arkham House; they were published in five volumes between 1984 and 1995.

His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question. His The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. Aside from his biography of Lovecraft, Joshi regards this book as his most notable achievement to date.

A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint.

The third of what amounts to a critical trilogy on the weird tale, The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004), includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.

Magazines Edited

In 1987 Joshi became the fifth Official Editor of the EOD amateur press association (see Esoteric Order of Dagon), an organisation devoted to the study of H.P. Lovecraft particularly but which also examines weird and fantasy fiction in all its forms. Joshi has maintained this role for over twenty years and is currently still Official Editor.

Joshi edited the journals Lovecraft Studies (1979—2001) and Studies in Weird Fiction (1986—2005), both published by Necronomicon Press; and Studies in the Fantastic (2008—09), published by the University of Tampa Press. He is also the editor of Weird Fiction Review (Centipede Press, 2010-), and Lovecraft Annual (2007- ) and co-editor of Dead Reckonings (2007 - ), journals published by Hippocampus Press.

Editions of Lovecraft's Letters

Joshi and his edtorial collaborator David E. Schultz have edited many volumes of Lovecraft's letters to individuals - for Necronomicon Press (including those to Richard F. Searight, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett); for Night Shade Books (Mysteries of Time and Spirit: Letters to Donald Wandrei) and Letters from New York; and for University of Tampa Press (O Fortunate Floridian: Letters to Robert H. Barlow),

Joshi and David E. Schultz are now progressively issuing volumes of H.P. Lovecraft's letters to individual correspondents through Hippocampus Press. Volumes already issued include Lovecraft's letters to Rheinhardt Kleiner, Alfred Galpin, August Derleth(2 vols) and Robert E. Howard(2 vols). There may be twenty or more volumes of Lovecraft's letters in this series. The next issued are likely to be Lovecraft's letters to James F. Morton (forthcoming, 2010), probably followed by those to Clark Ashton Smith.

Other Work including Volumes Forthcoming

Joshi edited the five-volume set of Lovecraft's Collected Essays issued by Hippocampus Press from 2004-2007. He edited two annotated volumes of Lovecraft's best work for Dell books (the second with Peter H. Cannon).

Joshi and David E. Schultz edited the collected poetry of Clark Ashton Smith, issued by Hippocampus Press (3 vols) (2007—2008), Joshi is working on the collected poetry of George Sterling.

Forthcoming works (some of which are discussed on Joshi's blog at his official website - see below) also include Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (to be published in two volumes, 2011 & 2012 by PS Publishing); and Encyclopedia of the Vampire (Greenwood Press); Horror Fiction Index; The Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism; a three-volume edition of the letters of Ambrose Bierce; bibliographies of William Hope Hodgson (with Sam Gafford and Mike Ashley) and of Clark Ashton Smith; The White People and Other Weird Tales by Arthur Machen(for Penguin Classics); Essential Writings by Ambrose Bierce (Library of America, forthcoming 2011); a comprehensive bibliography of Ray Bradbury (with Jon Eller); a revised/updated edition of the Ramsey Campbell bibliography The Core of Ramsey Campbell; and an edition of the correspondence between Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth.

Hippocampus Press has announced their new two-volume edition of his unabridged Lovecraft biography (in excess of 500,000 words), to appear August 2010 (as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft); this restores 150,000 words cut for space reasons from the original edition, and is also thoroughly revised and updated in regard to new information on Lovecraft that has come to light since 1996. Joshi will also edit an exhaustively annotated edition of Lovecraft's work for Bloodletting Press, to appear in two volumes (2011 and 2012). Hippocampus Press will release Joshi's compilation of early Lovecraft criticism, A Weird Writer in Our Midst

Joshi is general editor of a new line of original Cthulhu Mythos works from Perilous Press, including works by Michael Shea and Brian Stableford. The first publication was Shea's Copping Squid and Other Mythos Tales (2009).

Joshi has been asked by film director Guillermo del Toro to act as a consultant on del Toro's long-mooted film project, a cinematic version of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Del Toro will also contribute an introduction to Joshi's edition of Arthur Machen's tales for Penguin Classics.

Joshi is also working on editions of work by Robert Aickman (including Aickman's unpublished novel Go Back at Once), Maurice Level and John Metcalfe. He will be editing Black Wings II, a further anthology of Lovecraftian stories by modern authors for PS Publishing.

Social and Atheist Criticism   more

Personal Life   more

Bibliography   more

Awards   more

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "S. T. Joshi", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Total Books: 103
21stCentury Horror Weird Fiction at the Turn of the Millennium
The Agnostic Reader
The Agnostic Reader (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781591025337
ISBN-10: 1591025338
Genre: Religion & Spirituality
  • Currently 3/5 Stars.
 1

Ambrose Bierce  An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources
Ambrose Bierce an Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources [Bibliographies and Indexes in American Literature] (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780313306839
ISBN-10: 0313306834
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Reference, Substores
  ?

An H P Lovecraft Encyclopedia
An H P Lovecraft Encyclopedia (Other)Paperback, Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780313016820
ISBN-10: 0313016828
Genre: Reference
  ?

Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories
Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories [Penguin Classics] (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780142180150
ISBN-10: 0142180157
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Horror
  • Currently 2.5/5 Stars.
 1

The Angry Right Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong
The Angry Right Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781591024637
ISBN-10: 1591024633
Genre: Nonfiction
  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
 1

The Annotated HP Lovecraft
The Annotated Hp Lovecraft (Paperback)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780440506607
ISBN-10: 0440506603
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Horror
  • Currently 4.6/5 Stars.
 7

The Assaults of Chaos A Novel about H P Lovecraft
Black Wings III  New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror
Black Wings III New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781848636996
ISBN-10: 1848636997
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  • Currently 2.5/5 Stars.
 1

Black Wings of Cthulhu
Black Wings of Cthulhu [Volume 5] (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781785656910
ISBN-10: 1785656910
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Cahier d'tudes lovecraftiennes 2 Clefs pour Lovecraft
Cahier D'tudes Lovecraftiennes 2 Clefs Pour Lovecraft (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9782906389236
ISBN-10: 2906389234
  ?

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780141182346
ISBN-10: 0141182342
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Horror
  • Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
 18

Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories [Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics] (Hardcover)Paperback
Civil War Memories Nineteen Stories Of Battle Bravery Love And Tragedy
Classics and Contemporaries Some Notes on Horror Fiction
Conspiracy of Silence A Joe Scintilla Mystery / Tragedy at Sarsfield Manor A Joe Scintilla Mystery
The Crawling Chaos and Others
The Crawling Chaos and Others (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781935006152
ISBN-10: 1935006150
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
  ?

Cthulhu Lives An Eldritch Tribute to HP Lovecraft
Cthulhu Lives an Eldritch Tribute to Hp Lovecraft (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780957627147
ISBN-10: 0957627149
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Hardcover)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780870540394
ISBN-10: 0870540394
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Horror
  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
 3

The Development of the Weird Tale
The Development of the Weird Tale (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781793311955
ISBN-10: 1793311951
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

A Dreamer and A Visionary H P Lovecraft in His Time
The Dreams in the Witch House  And Other Weird Stories
The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories [Penguin Classics] (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780142437957
ISBN-10: 0142437956
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Teen & Young Adult, Horror
  • Currently 4.8/5 Stars.
 4

H P Lovecraft Nightmare Countries [The Master of Cosmic Horror] (Hardcover)
Hp Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism an Annotated Bibliography [Serif Series : Bibliographies and Checklists, No. 38] (Hardcover)
Lord Dunsany a Comprehensive Bibliography [Studies in Supernatural Literature] (Hardcover)
Lord Dunsany Master of the Angloirish Imagination [Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy] (Hardcover)
Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction [Liverpool University Press - Liverpool Science Fiction Texts Studies] (Hardcover)Paperback