Clark Ashton Smith

Biography

Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) was an American poet, sculptor, painter, and writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Along with H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, he formed the great triumvirate of Weird Tales magazine writers in the 1930s. Smith's fiction is set in a series of richly imagined worlds—Hyperborea, Poseidonis, Zothique, Averoigne—rendered in ornate, jeweled prose that has few equals in English. His stories blend decadence, dark humor, and cosmic terror with a vocabulary and style more reminiscent of French Symbolist poets than typical pulp fiction. Smith was also a highly regarded poet, publishing his first volume at age nineteen.