The Advance of the Weird Tale

For decades, S. T. Joshi has been a leading critic of horror and supernatural fiction. In this new collection of his miscellaneous essays, Joshi addresses not only the broader issues relating to weird fiction but also many of the key writers in the field over the past century or more. Joshi uses his expertise in classical literature to trace the supernatural in Greek and Latin literature, and also presents overviews of such central motifs as the ghost story and the haunted house. Among the writers of weird fiction’s “golden age” (c. 1880–1940), Joshi probes the work of Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and others. H. P. Lovecraft has long been a central focus of Joshi’s scholarship, and he presents several trenchant articles here: Lovecraft’s relations to Gothic fiction and to Edgar Allan Poe; his landmark essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”; and his influence on Fritz Leiber, August Derleth, and others. Joshi is also well versed in contemporary weird fiction, as his essays on Ramsey Campbell, W. H. Pugmire, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and others demonstrate. In all, this volume displays Joshi’s critical acuity in the entire realm of the weird in literature.