The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith

The Miscellaneous Fictions of Clark Ashton Smith gathers together the adventure, juvenilia and other non-fantastic fiction of Smith. While he is known best for his fantastic work, these adventure and mainstream stories shed light on the development of Smith’s writing and his constantly evolving style. The Miscellaneous Fictions is a perfect companion to the five volume Collected Fantasies set. As with that set, editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger have prepared this volume by comparing original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith’s notes and letters, in order to prepare a definitive set of texts. Contents of The Miscellaneous Fictions include “The Animated Sword,” “The Malay Crise,” “The Ghost of Mohammed Din,” “The Mahout,” “The Rajah and the Tiger,” “Something New,” “The Flirt,” “The Perfect Woman,” “A Platonic Entanglement,” “The Expert Lover,” “The Parrot,” “A Copy of Burns,” “Checkmate,” “The Infernal Star,” “The Dead will Cuckold You,” “House of the Monoceros,” “Dawn of Discord,” and many others.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

About the Author

Clark Ashton Smith was born on January 13, 1893, in Long Valley, California, but lived most of his life in Auburn. Ill health as a child prevented him from attending all but five years of school, but he set upon an extensive campaign of self-education. He began to write at an early age, and sold several short stories to magazines such as Overland Monthly and Black Cat at the age of seventeen. Smith’s first book, The Star-Treader and Other Poems, was a sensation when published in 1912. He was hailed by the San Francisco press as a new Keats and as the boy-poet of the Sierras. Ambrose Bierce read some of Smith’s poems in manuscript and praised them highly. The necessity to care for his aging parents led Smith to take up the writing of imaginative short stories for pulp magazines such as Wonder Stories and Weird Tales in the late 1920s. During the space of five years he turned out approximately one hundred polished and imaginative tales of “inconceivable fear and unimaginable love.” These were later collected together, and have been translated into several languages. The deaths of his parents, combined with a growing disgust at the low standards of pulp editors and readers, led to his resumption of poetry writing. Smith married late in life, to Carol Dorman, and moved to Pacific Grove in 1954. He died in 1961, having seen his fourth collection of short stories, The Abominations of Yondo, achieve print.

Reviews

News