The Parameters of the Weird Tale

This latest volume of S. T. Joshi’s miscellaneous essays on weird fiction features a number of essays on classic tales of horror and the supernatural from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” to Robert W. Chambers’s “The Yellow Sign.” The life and work of H. P. Lovecraft remains a primary focus of Joshi’s scholarship, and included here are essays on Lovecraft’s juvenile writings, on such landmark works as Fungi from Yuggoth and At the Mountains of Madness, and discussions of such contemporaries as Frank Belknap Long, Robert Barbour Johnson, and Everil Worrell. Joshi’s work on recent weird fiction includes essays on Karl Edward Wagner, Michael McDowall, and weird poetry. The volume concludes with a series of autobiographical pieces, including a chronology of Joshi’s earliest writings, engaging polemics against colleagues and rivals, and letters to various magazines defending Lovecraft (and Joshi himself) from attacks. All in all, the book is a variegated assemblage that demonstrates why S. T. Joshi remains one of the most dynamic critics in the field.