Joseph Shaw (editor)

Template:Short description {{#invoke:Other people|otherPeople}} Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox person Joseph T. "Cap" Shaw (May 8, 1874 – August 2, 1952) was the editor of Black Mask magazine from 1926 to 1936.

Life and career

Before becoming the editor of Black Mask, Shaw had worked as a newspaper reporter and as a soldier in World War I, attaining the rank of captain (Shaw's friends gave him the nickname "Cap").<ref name="server">Danger is My Business: an illustrated history of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines by Lee Server. Chronicle Books, 1993, Template:ISBN (pp. 68-70).</ref> Shaw was also a professional fencer, and even won an Olympic medal for fencing.<ref name="server" /><ref name="weber">Hired Pens : Professional Writers in America's Golden Age of print by Ronald Weber. Ohio University Press, 1997 Template:ISBN (p. 98)</ref> Under his editorship, Black Mask published many works of crime fiction now recognised as classics of the genre, by authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner.<ref name="weber" /><ref>Black Mask magazine Template:Webarchive</ref><ref>"Pulps" by Robert Sampson, in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, edited by William L. DeAndrea. Macmillan, 1994, Template:ISBN (p.287-9)</ref> Chandler greatly admired Shaw's ability to encourage Black Mask writers, claiming in a letter, "We wrote better for him than we could have written for anybody else."<ref name="server" />

Despite the critical and commercial success of Black Mask, Shaw was eventually fired from the magazine, succeeded by Fanny Ellsworth. Shaw then worked as a literary agent, though without notable success.<ref name="Chandler">Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, Frank MacShane, ed., Columbia University Press, 1981, Template:ISBN (pp. 5-8).</ref>

Shaw was a writer himself, producing short stories, novels, and articles.

Works

Novels

• Derelict (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930)
• Blood on the Curb (Steeger Books, 2020)
• It Happened at the Lake (Steeger Books, 2022)

Short stories

• "Alkali Ethics," The Scrap Book, May 1911 [first known publication]
• "Close Shootin’," Pioneer Tales, July 1928

Articles

• "Do You Want to Become a Writer? or Do You Want to Make Money?," Writer's Digest, May 1934.
• "Dialogue," Writer's Digest, June 1939.

Editor

• The Hard Boiled Omnibus: Early Stories from Black Mask (includes introduction) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946)

Further reading

• Bodin, Ed. "An Interview With Joseph T. Shaw," The Author and Composer, August 1932.
• Lenniger, August. "Black Mask" (interview), Writer's Digest, October 1929.
• Safire, William. "The Way We Live Now: 4-30-00: On Language; Dirigiste", New York Times, April 30, 2000.
• Shaw, Milton. Joseph T. Shaw: The Man Behind Black Mask. Black Mask, 2019. Biography, by his son.

References

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