S. T. Joshi

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Sunand Tryambak Joshi (b. 22 June 1958 in Pune, India) is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and Lord Dunsany, and has edited collections of their works.

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. 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 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.

Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press.

At the time of writing, Joshi is working towards the publication of the collected work of Clark Ashton Smith and George Sterling, and Lovecraft’s Collected Essays.

In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader is scheduled for release in 2007. Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.

Joshi, who lives with his wife in Seattle, has stated that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been the corrected texts of Lovecraft’s fiction and other works, his biography of Lovecraft, and The Weird Tale.

[edit] Bibliography

H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981).
H. P. Lovecraft (Starmont Reader's Guide 13) (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1982).
The Weird Tale (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
John Dickson Carr: A critical study (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1990).
H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990).
Lord Dunsany: A Bibliography (with Darrell Schweitzer) (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1993).
Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995).
The Core of Ramsey Campbell: A Bibliography & Reader's Guide (with Ramsey Campbell and Stefan Dziemianowicz) (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1995).
H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1996).
Documents of American Prejudice (edited) (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
Atheism: A Reader (edited) (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, [October] 2000).
The Modern Weird Tale (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, [March] 2001).
Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, [June] 2001).
God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, [June] 2003).
Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft (New York, NY: Hippocampus Press, 2003).
The Evolution of the Weird Tale (New York, NY: Hippocampus Press, 2004).
The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting it Wrong (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).