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Bio-Bibliographies: Emperor of Dreams – castaliahouse.com

Bio-Bibliographies: Emperor of Dreams

Sunday , 15, December 2019 2 Comments

Another favorite bio-bibliography is Donald Sidney-Fryer’s Emperor of Dream: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography. This book came out in 1978 from Donald M. Grant Books.

Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Principal Facts of Biography

Collections

Clark Ashton Smith – In Memory of a Great Friendship by Eric Barker

Poems

Poems in French

Poems in Spanish

Translations of Poems From the French

From the Spanish

Prose Translation of Verse

Contents of Poetry Collections

Uncollected Poems

Appearances of Poems in Anthologies, Etc.

Poems in Prose

Tales

Addendum

Contents of Prose Collections

Uncollected Tales

Appearances of Tales in Anthologies

Epigrams and Pensees

Miscellaneous Prose

Juvenilia

Periodicals

Published Letters

The Auburn Journal and Weird Tales

About Clark Ashton Smith

Library Holdings of Smith Mss.

Pseudonyms

Five Approaches to the Achievements of Clark Ashton Smith – Cosmic Master Artist by Marvin R. Hiemstra

Index to First Lines of Poems

The Sorcerer Departs by Clark Ashton Smith

Letters

Fritz Leiber

Ray Bradbury

August Derleth

Stanton A. Coblentz

Avram Davidson

H. Warner Munn

George F. Haas

Harlan Ellison

Madelynne Greene

E. Hoffmann Price

Sam Moskowitz

Ethel Heiple

Genevieve Sully

Rah Hoffman

Photographs

I bought this one well used without dust jacket in the mid-80s. I first read of Clark Ashton Smith in the introductions by Karl Edward Wagner in the Berkley Medallion Conan paperbacks, intros by L. Sprague de Camp in the Ace Conan paperbacks, and the introduction by Lin Carter to The Adventures of Jules de Grandin. I first read Clark Ashton Smith in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos where I first read “Ubbo-Sathla” and “The Return of the Sorcerer.” I was hooked. I never had a problem with Smith’s prose style unlike Isaac Asimov who made his displeasure with CAS known in the anthology Before the Golden Age.

I consider Clark Ashton Smith to be the other foundational pillar of the sword and sorcery genre along with Robert E. Howard. He was unique.  I was fortunate in that David Hartwell published three Clark Ashton Smith collections in the early 80s with the Timescape Books imprint. I then found the four Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks that filled in a few more holes. I spent hours like I did with The Last Celt learning more about Clark Ashton Smith and finding out what stories I did not have. In time I got all of Clark Ashton Smith’s fiction tracked down due to a friend in England who found the paperback reprints of the Arkham House books for me.

There is a Clark Ashton Smith trade paperback collection in print right now from Penguin, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies. This is a good place to start if you have not sampled Clark Ashton Smith.

2 Comments
  • JohnnyMac says:

    I was first introduced to pleasures of CAS’s work back in the early ’70s in the Ballatine Books collections edited by Lin Carter (may he rest in peace). Currently, a lot of Smith’s work is available in the “Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith” volumes from Night Shade Books. There are, I think, five volumes in the set.

  • John E. Boyle says:

    I think you’ve nailed it when you call CAS the other foundational pillar of Sword & Sorcery. CAS was incredibly talented; in addition to his prose and poetry, I believe he was an artist and a sculptor as well.

    I think CAS was immensely influential on those who would write S&S fiction from the 30’s on, but one thing I KNOW: Nobody, not Poe, not Lovecraft, no one to this day scares me like Clark Ashton Smith.

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