Genius Loci and Other Tales

VERY GOOD condition — DUST JACKET: Minor wear & tear to top and bottom edges of spine, panels, folds and flaps. Very minor chipping to top corners of spine and bottom center of same, bottom outside corners, and top edge of back panel. Sun darkening to spine, folds and top edge of flaps. Stressing to folds. BOARDS: Very good condition. Wear to crown and foot of spine. A couple of very small bumps, both boards. Shelf rubbing to bottom edges. BOOK: Very good condition. Age toning/offsetting to endpapers. Bookplate affixed to front pastedown. Please inspect photos closely for condition details.

Here on offer is a very nice copy of Clark Ashton Smith's volume of short stories, Genius Loci and Other Tales, a supernatural journey into the macabre in 18 stories. This copy is a 1st trade edition, 1st printing of the work published by Arkham House in 1948. The dust jacket is protected from further wear by a Mylar sleeve.

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"The weirdest realms in fantasy

Here again in these sixteen stories are the gorgeous, luxuriant, and feverishly distorted visions of infinite spheres and multiple dimensions which have made of Clark Ashton Smith's work something unique in the annals of the macabre. In this collection there are tales of Hyperborea, Zothique, Averoigne, Atlantis, Xiccarph, and other vanished worlds of Smith's unparalleled creation. Here are such unforgettable tales as Vulthoom, The Colossus of Ylourgne, The Charnel God, The Black Abbot of Puuthuum, The Weaver in the Vault, and others.

'None strikes the note of cosmic horror as well as Clark Ashton Smith. In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living' - H.P. Lovecraft

'He had a monstrously vivid imagination, a keenly ironic sense of humour, and an uninhibited bent for the macabre.' - L. Sprague de Camp"

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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", though some readers objected to his morbidness and violation of pulp traditions. The fantasy writer and 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."

The above text was taken from, respectively, Panther Books Ltd. and Wikipedia.