Lair of the Eldritch Dark: The Collected Works of Clark Ashton Smith (Illustrated)

by Clark Ashton Smith

Overview

Lair of the Eldritch Dark gathers many of Clark Ashton Smith's classic tales of fantasy and horror—along with his ethereal poetry and prose poems—together in one wide-ranging volume of speculative fantastical fiction and verse.



A great friend of H. P. Lovecraft and a contemporary of Robert E. Howard, Smith's vivid imagination and unique antiheroes created worlds that pushed the accepted boundaries of both realism and fantasy, ushering in new ways of writing while challenging readers to think differently.



Smith's wide-ranging influence is still felt strongly today. His enthusiastic readers went on to build and mold the genres of fantasy, horror, and SF as we know them. Gene Wolfe, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, Leigh Brackett, Harlan Ellison, and George R. R. Martin among many others were influenced by Smith's otherworldly, visionary fiction.



The following books, stories, poems, and prose poems are included in Lair of the Eldritch Dark:



Books of Poetry and Prose Poems:



The Star-Treader and Other Poems



Ebony and Crystal: Poems in Verse and Prose



Short Stories:

Averoigne:

• The Colossus of Ylourgne
• The Disinterment of Venus
• Mother of Toads
• The Enchantress of Sylaire
• A Rendezvous In Averoigne

Hyperborea:

• The Door to Saturn
• The Seven Geases
• The Tale of Satampra Zeiros

Poseidonis:

• Atlantis
• From a Letter/Muse of Atlantis
• The Death of Malygris
• The Double Shadow

Maal Dweb of Xiccarph:

• The Maze of Maal Dweb
• The Flower-Women

Aihai/Mars:

• Vulthoom

Zothique:

• The Weaver in the Vault
• The Witchcraft of Ulua
• The Charnel God
• The Tomb-Spawn
• Xeethra
• The Dark Eidolon
• Necromancy in Naat
• The Black Abbot of Puthuum
• The Death of Ilalotha
• The Garden of Adompha
• The Master of the Crabs
• Morthylla
• The Last Hieroglyph

Other Short Stories:

• The Ghost of Mohammed Din
• The Mahout
• Prince Alcouz and the Magician
• The Raja and the Tiger
• Something New
• The Planet of the Dead
• The Demon of the Flower
• The Chain of Aforgomon
• The Devotee of Evil

Other Poetry:

• Adventure
• Afterwards
• Alienage
• Apologia
• August
• Autumn Orchards
• Autumn's Pall
• The Barrier
• Brumal
• The City of the Titans
• Contradiction
• Departure
• Don Juan Sings
• Dream Mystery
• Duality
• The End of Autumn
• Forgotten Sorrow
• The Horizon
• Interrogation
• The Love-Potion
• Moon-Dawn
• Moonlight
• Nyctalops
• Ougabalys
• Psalm to the Desert
• Remembrance
• The Secret
• Selenique
• Semblance
• The Song of Aviol
• The Song of Cartha
• Song of the Necromancer
• To the Chimera
• The Unremembered
• A Valediction
• We Shall Meet
• The Wind and the Moon
• The Wingless Archangels
• Witch-Dance
• The Witch with Eyes of Amber
• You are not Beautiful
• Luna Aeternalis

Other Prose Poetry:

• The Lake of Enchanted Silence
• To the Daemon

Epigrams:

• Abandoned Plum-Orchard.
• Cats in Winter Sunlight

Translations:

• Parisian Dream by Charles Baudelaire
• Alchemy of Sorrow by Charles Baudelaire
• The Owls

This book also includes numerous illustrations by Smith for reader enjoyment.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940186640950
Publisher:	Castanea Classics
Publication date:	09/19/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Clark Ashton Smith (January 13, 1893 – August 14, 1961) was an American writer and artist. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne. As a poet, Smith is grouped with the West Coast Romantics alongside Joaquin Miller, Sterling, and Nora May French and remembered as "The Last of the Great Romantics" and "The Bard of Auburn". Smith's work was praised by his contemporaries. H. P. Lovecraft stated that "in sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Clark Ashton Smith is perhaps unexcelled", and Ray Bradbury said that Smith "filled my mind with incredible worlds, impossibly beautiful cities, and still more fantastic creatures".

Smith was one of "the big three of Weird Tales, with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft", but some readers objected to his morbidness and violation of pulp traditions. The fantasy critic L. Sprague de Camp said of him that "nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse." Smith was a member of the Lovecraft circle and his literary friendship with Lovecraft lasted from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937. His work is marked by an extraordinarily rich and ornate vocabulary, a cosmic perspective and a vein of sardonic and sometimes ribald humor.

Of his writing style, Smith stated: "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation."