Clark Ashton Smith

At 68 years old, Clark Ashton Smith physical status not available right now. We will update Clark Ashton Smith's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Clark Ashton Smith (January 13, 1893-1961), an American writer and artist, was born in 1893.

He gained early local acclaim for traditional poetry in the vein of Swinburne, largely thanks to George Sterling's enthusiasm.

Smith, as a writer, is grouped with the West Coast Romantics alongside Joaquin Miller, Sterling, and Nora May French, and is known as "The Last of the Great Romantics" and "The Bard of Auburn."

Smith's contemporaries lauded his work.

Clark Ashton Smith was "probably unexcelled" in "absolute mystery and fertility of conception, according to Ray Bradbury, but other readers, such as Robert E.Howard and H.P.Lovecraft, were concerned about his morbidity and violation of pulp traditions.

"No one since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse," fantasy writer L.Sprague de Camp said of him. Smith was a member of the Lovecraft circle, and his literary acquaintance with Lovecraft lasted from 1922 to Lovecraft's death in 1937.

His career is characterized by an exceptionally wide and ornate vocabulary, a cosmic view, and a vein of sardonic and occasionally ribald humor. Smith's writing style inspired the reader to accept an impossibility, or series of impossibilities by a method of verbal black magic, to which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, counter-point, and other stylistic tools.

Early life and education

Smith was born in Long Valley, California, on January 13, 1893, into a family of English and New England roots. He spent the majority of his life in Auburn, California, where his parents, Fanny and Timeus Smith, lived in a cabin built by his parents. Smith professed to looe the town's provincialism, but he didn't leave it until he married late in life.

His formal education was limited: he suffered from mood disorders, including severe agoraphobia, and although he was accepted to high school after eight years of grammar school, his parents decided it was better for him to be taught at home. Smith, an insatiable reader with an extraordinary memory, seemed to have retained most or all of what he read. He began a self-directed literary journey after leaving formal education, including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Hans Christian Andersen and Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy tales, The Arabian Nights, and Edgar Allan Poe's poems. He read an unabridged dictionary word for word, examining not only the words but also their etymology.

The other primary course in Smith's self-education was to read the Encyclopdia Britannica's complete 11th edition at least twice. Smith learned to translate verse from those languages, including works by Gérard de Nerval, Paul Verlaine, Amado Nervo, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, and just six of Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil poems.

At the age of 11, his first literary efforts took the form of fairy tales and recreations of the Arabian Nights. He wrote long adventure books about Oriental life later in life. By 14, he had already written The Black Diamonds, a short adventure book that was unveiled for years before being published in 2002. In his teenage years, The Sword of Zagan (unpublished until 2004) was another juvenile book published. The Arabian Nights, like William Beckford's Vain The Black Diamonds, are known to have heavily influenced Smith's early writing, as well as William Beckford's Vain.

He sold several stories to The Black Cat, a journal that specialized in unusual stories, at age 17. In this brief glimpse into fantasy that preceded his poetic career, he also published some stories in the Overland Monthly.

However, it was mainly poetry that motivated the young Smith, who restricted his attempts to poetry for more than a decade. Smith met George Sterling, a San Francisco poet, while attending a local Auburn Monday Night Club, where he performed several of his poems with a great deal of success. Smith was introduced by the Poetry of Baudelaire during a month-long visit to Sterling in Carmel, California.

At the age of 19, he became Sterling's protégé, and Sterling helped him to publish his first collection of poems, The Star-Treader and Other Poems. Smith's collection has received international recognition. American commentators praised the Star-Treader, one of whom named Smith "the Keats of the Pacific." Smith briefly joined Ambrose Bierce and Jack London in the circle, but his early fame faded away soon.

Smith's health faded and his literary output was uneventful for eight years, although he wrote his best poetry during this time. In 1918, Odes and Sonnets, a small collection, was published. Smith first connected with literary figures who would later become a member of H.P. Smith knew them well before Lovecraft; they were in fact older than Lovecraft. These include poet Samuel Loveman and bookman George Kirk. In fact, it was Smith who introduced Donald Wandrei to Lovecraft. Since Lovecraft was a member of a "Smith" circle, it has been suggested that it might as well be referred to as a Lovecraft one.

Smith wrote The Hashish Eater, or The Apocalypse of Evil, a long poem in blank verse that was published in Ebony and Crystal (1922). This was followed by a fan letter from H. P. Lovecraft, which marked the beginning of 15 years of friendship and correspondence. Smith and Lovecraft derived from each other's coinages and the names of strange gods for their stories, but Smith's interpretation of the Lovecraft theme has been dubbed the "Clark Ashton Smythos."

Sandalwood was partly funded by a $50 donation from Donald Wandoi in 1925. Except for some imaginative vignettes or prose poems, he wrote little fiction in this period. Smith was unemployed for the majority of his life and he did a lot of manual labor, such as fruit picking and woodcutting to help himself and his children. He was a natural cook and made many types of wine. In addition to contributing a column to The Auburn Journal and occasionally as its night editor, he excelled at digging, typing, and journalism.

Albert M. Bender, one of Smith's most popular writers and frequent correspondents, was a San Francisco businessman.

Smith, a writer who was younger parents' health, recovered fiction writing and published more than a hundred short stories between 1929 and 1934, nearly all of which can be described as weird horror or science fiction, at the start of the depression in 1929. He drew upon the nightmares that had dogged him during teenage bouts of sickness, like Lovecraft. Brian Stableford has written that the stories written during this brief period of frantic productivity "constitute one of the most remarkable oeuvres in imaginative literature."

In an edition of 1000 copies printed by the Auburn Journal, he published at his own expense a volume containing six of his best stories, The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies. The focus of much of his fiction is egotism and its supernatural punishment; his strange fiction is mainly macabre in subject matter, and it is surrounded by images of death, decay, and abnormality.

Smith's odd fiction can be divided into four series set in Hyperborea, Poseidonis, Averoigne, and Zothique. Hyperborea, a lost continent of Atlantis, and Poseidonis, which is a remnant of Atlantis, are similar, with a magical culture defined by strangeness, cruelty, death, and postmortem horrors. Averoigne is Smith's pre-modern France, which is similar to James Branch Cabell's Poisesme. Zothique is a billion-year-old creature. "It's the last continent of Earth," says the sun astute and tarnished. These tales have been compared to Jack Vance's Dying Earth sequence.

Smith began collaborating with Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian's Texan ancestor. Smith, Howard, and Lovecraft, the founders of the Weird Tales school of fiction, consulted often, although they never met. E. Hoffmann Price, the writer of oriental fantasies, is the only one to have encountered all three characters in the flesh.

Steven Behrends has suggested that Smith's common theme of 'loss' (whether his characters try to recapture a long-vanished youth, early love, or scenic past) is a sign of Smith's own experience of a "fall from grace":

Fanny Smith's mother died in September 1935. Smith spent the next two years caring for his father after his death. In December 1937, Timeus was born in London. Smith, who was 44 years old at the time, has almost stopped writing fiction. Robert E. Howard's death by suicide (1936), Lovecraft's death from cancer (1937) and his parents' deaths left him exhausted. As a result, he departed from the scene, marking the end of Weird Tales' Golden Age. He began sculpting and then returned to poetry. However, many writers at his cabin, including Fritz Leiber, Rah Hoffman, Francis T. Laney, and others, visited Smith.

In 1942, three years after August Derleth, there was the establishment of Arkham House for the purpose of preserving H.P.'s work. Lovecraft, Derleth, was the first of several major Smith's fiction collections, Out of Space and Time (1942). Lost Worlds (1944) followed this. The books slowed, went out of print, and became expensive rarities. Derleth released five more volumes of Smith's prose and two of his poetry, as well as two of his poetry, and there was a substantial number of Smith's poems in press at his death in 1971.

Smith died of coronary disease in 1953. On November 10, 1954, he married Carol(yn) Jones Dorman, age 61. Dorman had a lot of experience in Hollywood and radio public relations. They migrated to Pacific Grove, California, where he established a family with three children after honeymooning at the Smith cabin. (Carol had been married before.) He alternated between the house on Indian Ridge and their house in Pacific Grove for many years. Smith had sold the majority of his father's land in 1957, but some believed it was accidental.

Smith and others at Pacific Grove now did gardening for others, and a goatee grew. Despite Derleth's badgering, he spent much time shopping and strolling near the seafront but decided against writing more fiction. He had a string of strokes in 1961 and died in his sleep in August 1961, aged 68. Carol remarried (becoming Carolyn Wakefield) and died of cancer after Smith's death.

The poet's ashes were buried beside or beneath a boulder to the immediate west of where he grew up (fire in 2005) and others were scattered in a stand of blue oaks near the boulder. There was no marker on the map. Plaques honoring Smith were on display at the Auburn Placer County Library in 1985 and in Bicentennial Park in Auburn in 2003.

Roy A. Squires was named Smith's "west coast executor," with Jack L. Chalker as his "east coast executor." Many letterpress editions of individual Smith poems were released by Squires.

Prof William Dorman, director of CASiana Literary Enterprises, represents Smith's literary estate. Many Smith stories are owned by Arkham House, but some are now in the public domain.

See Lin Carter's entry on "posthumous collaborations" by Smith (stories written by Lin Carter).

Early writing

His first literary attempts, at the age of 11, took the form of fairy tales and imitates of the Arabian Nights. He wrote long adventure books about Oriental life later in life. By 14 he had already written The Black Diamonds, a short adventure book that hadn't been published for years until 2002. The Sword of Zagan, another juvenile book, was not released until 2004. It's predecessor, The Black Diamonds, uses a medieval, Arabian Nights setting, and Arabian Nights, like the Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allan Poe's fairy tales, are known to have heavily inspired Smith's early writing, as well as William Beckford's Vain Vain.

At age 17, he sold several stories to The Black Cat, a newspaper that specialized in unusual stories. In this short foray into fantasy that predated his poetic career, he also published some stories in the Overland Monthly.

The young Smith was mainly motivated by poetry, but he restricted his attempts to poetry to poetry for more than a decade. Smith became acquainted with San Francisco poet George Sterling through a friend of the Auburn Monday Night Club, where he read several of his poems with great success. Smith was introduced by the Poetry of Baudelaire during a month-long visit to Sterling in Carmel, California.

He became Sterling's protégé, and Sterling helped him to publish his first collection of poems, The Star-Treader and Other Poems, at the age of 19. Smith's collection has received international recognition. American commentators, one of whom called Smith "the Keats of the Pacific," applauded the Star-Treader. Smith appeared in the circle that included Ambrose Bierce and Jack London for a brief period, but his early fame dissipated shortly.

Smith's health worsened and his literary output was spotless for eight years, but he wrote his best poetry during that time. In 1918, a small amount, Odes and Sonnets, was introduced. Smith first came into contact with literary figures who would later be included in H.P. Smith knew them much earlier than Lovecraft; they were far earlier than Lovecraft. Samuel Loveman and George Kirk, among other literary figures, are among these figures. It was Smith who introduced Donald Wandrei to Lovecraft, which was later introduced by Smith. For this reason, Lovecraft may as well be referred to as a member of a "Smith" group, as Smith was a member of a Lovecraft one.

Smith wrote The Hashish Eater, a celebrated long poem in blank verse that was published in Ebony and Crystal (1922). This was followed by H. P. Lovecraft's fan letter, which was the start of 15 years of friendship and correspondence. Smith and Lovecraft used each others' coinages of place names and the names of unusual gods for their stories, but Smith's interpretation of the Lovecraft theme has been dubbed the "Clark Ashton Smythos."

Sandalwood, which was partially funded by a donation of $50 from Donald Wandlo, was published in 1925 by Smith. With the exception of some innovative vignettes or prose poems, he wrote little fiction in this period. Smith was unemployed for the majority of his life and he did hard manual jobs such as fruit picking and woodcutting to help himself and his families. He was a good cook and made many varieties of wine. In addition to writing a column and occasionally serving as the Auburn Journal's night editor, he excelled at digging, typing, and journalism.

Albert M. Bender, one of Smith's most popular customers and frequent correspondents, was a San Francisco businessman.

Smith resurrects fiction writing and published more than a hundred short stories between 1929 and 1934, nearly all of which can be categorized as weird horror or science fiction at the start of the Great Depression in 1929. He drew on the nightmares that had dogged him during youthful bouts of sickness, like Lovecraft. The tales written during this brief period of soaring productivity "constitute one of the most fascinating oeuvres in imaginative literature," Brian Stableford has wrote.

In an edition of 1000 copies published by the Auburn Journal, he published at his own expense a book containing six of his best stories, The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, containing six of his best stories. A large part of his writing is about egotism and its supernatural punishment; his strange fiction is typically macabre in subject matter, and it is surrounded by images of death, decay, and abnormality.

Smith's strange fiction is divided into four series set in Hyperborea, Poseidonis, Averoigne, and Zothique. Hyperborea, which is a forgotten continent of the Miocene period, and Poseidonis, which is a remnant of Atlantis, are remarkably similar, with a magical culture marked by strangeness, cruelty, death, and postmortem horrors. Averoigne is Smith's pre-modern France, similar to James Branch Cabell's Poitesme. Zothique is expected to live for millions of years to come. It is "the last continent of Earth," when the sun is dim and tarnished." These tales have been compared to Jack Vance's Dying Earth sequence.

Smith began corresponding with Robert E. Howard, the Conan the Barbarian's Texan creator. Smith, Howard, and Lovecraft were the foundings of the Weird Tales school of fiction from 1933 to 1936, although they never met. E. Hoffmann Price, the oriental fantasies' writer, is the only one known to have encountered both writers in person.

Steve Behrends has suggested that Smith's fictional 'loss' (many of his characters' attempt to recapture a long-vanished youth, early passion, or picturesque past) reflects Smith's own experience of a "fall from grace":

Fanny Smith's mother died in September 1935. Smith spent the next two years caring for his father after his death. In December 1937, Timeus came to a conclusion. Smith, who was 44 years old at the time, has essentially stopped writing fiction. Robert E. Howard's death by suicide (1936), Lovecraft's death from cancer (1937), and his parents' deaths left him exhausted. As a result, he withdrew from the scene, marking the end of Weird Tales' Golden Age. He started sculpture and returned to poetry. Nevertheless, Smith was visited by several writers at his cabin, including Fritz Leiber, Rah Hoffman, Francis T. Laney, and others.

In 1942, three years after August Derleth, we founded Arkham House for the purpose of preserving the H.P.'s work. Out of Space and Time (1942), Lovecraft, Derleth, was the first of many major collections of Smith's fiction. Lost Worlds (1944) was followed by this. The books came out of print slowly, became costly rarities, and went out of print. Derleth has two more volumes of Smith's prose and two of his poetry, as well as two of his poems, which were distributed in newspapers at his death in 1971.

Smith died of coronary disease in 1953. He married Carol(yn) Jones Dorman on November 10, 1954, at the age of 61. Dorman had extensive experience in Hollywood and radio public relations. They moved to Pacific Grove, California, where he established a family with three children after honeymooning at the Smith cabin. (Carol had been married before) He alternated between the house on Indian Ridge and their house in Pacific Grove for many years. Smith's father's farm burned in 1957, according to some, but others believed by accident.

Smith also did gardening for other Pacific Grove residents and grew a goatee. Despite Derleth's badgering, he spent a lot of time shopping and walking near the seafront, but he resisted the publishing of more fiction. He had a series of strokes in 1961 and then died in his sleep in August 1961. Carol remarried (becoming Carolyn Wakefield) and later died of cancer after Smith's death.

The poet's remains were buried beside or underneath a boulder to the immediate west of where his childhood home (destroyed by fire in 1957) stood; others were also scattered in a stand of blue oaks near the boulder. There was no marker. Plaques commemorating Smith were installed at the Auburn Placer County Library in 1985 and in Bicentennial Park in Auburn in 2003.

Roy A. Squires was named Smith's "west coast executor," with Jack L. Chalker as his "east coast executor." Many letterpress editions of individual Smith's poems were published by Squires.

Prof William Dorman, director of CASiana Literary Enterprises, represents Smith's literary estate. Many Smith stories now have the copyright, but some are no longer in the public domain.

See Lin Carter's entry on "posthumous collaborations" of Smith (stories of Lin Carter).

Later life, marriage and death

Smith died of coronary disease in 1953. He married Carol(yn) Jones Dorman on November 10, 1954, aged 61. Dorman had a long career in Hollywood and radio public relations. After honeymooning at the Smith family's house, they moved to Pacific Grove, California, where he raised a family of three children. (Carol was not married before.) For many years, he alternated between the house on Indian Ridge and their house in Pacific Grove. The Smiths believed by arson because Smith had sold the majority of his father's property in 1957.

Smith grew a goatee and enjoyed gardening for other Pacific Grove residents. He spent a lot of time walking along the seafront, but Derleth's badgering discouraged him from writing any more fiction. He had a string of strokes in 1961 and then died in his sleep in August 1961, the 68-year-old grandfather. Carol remarried (becoming Carolyn Wakefield) and died of cancer after Smith's death and died of cancer later.

The poet's ashes were buried alongside, or beneath, a boulder to the immediate west of where his childhood home (destroyed by fire in 1957) stood; others were also scattered in a stand of blue oaks near the boulder. There was no marker. Plaques honoring Smith were unveiled at the Auburn Placer County Library in 1985 and 2003 in Bicentennial Park in Auburn.

Roy A. Squires was named Smith's "west coast executor," with Jack L. Chalker as his "east coast executor." Many letterpress editions of individual Smith poems were published by Squires.

Prof. William Dorman, founder of CASiana Literary Enterprises, represents Smith's literary estate. Although some Smith stories are now in the public domain, Arkham House holds the copyright to several Smith articles.

See Lin Carter's entry on 'posthumous collaborations' of Smith (literal by Lin Carter).

Books published in Smith's lifetime

Scholars S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz are preparing several more volumes of Smith's letters to such of his personal correspondents as Donald Wandtz and Robert H. Barlow.

Source

Return to poetry and sculpture after a mid-life: back to poetry and sculpture.

Fanny Smith's mother Fanny died in September 1935. Smith spent the next two years caring for his father after his death. Timeus died in December 1937. Smith, who was 44 years old at the time, has essentially stopped writing fiction. Robert E. Howard's death by suicide (1936), Lovecraft's death from cancer (1937), and his parents' deaths left him distraught. He departed from the scene, marking the conclusion of Weird Tales' Golden Age. He began sculpting and revived poetry writing. However, Smith's cabin was visited by several writers, including Fritz Leiber, Rah Hoffman, Francis T. Laney, and others.

In 1942, three years after August Derleth's death, Arkham House was established for the purpose of preserving H.P.'s work. Out of Space and Time (1942), Lovecraft, Derleth, was the first of many major Smith's fiction collections. Lost Worlds (1944) was followed by this. The books came out of print, became out of print, and became expensive rarities. Derleth has five more volumes of Smith's prose and two of his poetry, as well as two of his poems, and a large number of Smith's poems in press at his death in 1971.

Smith died of coronary disease in 1953. He married Carol(yn) Jones Dorman on November 10, 1954, aged 61. Dorman had a long career in Hollywood and radio public relations. They then moved to Pacific Grove, California, where he set up a family including her three children after honeymooning at the Smith cabin. (Carol had been married before) He alternated between the house on Indian Ridge and their house in Pacific Grove for several years. Smith's father's property was sold in 1957, but others believed by accident.

Smith began growing a goatee and occasionally did gardening for other Pacific Grove residents. He spent a lot of time shopping and walking near the seafront, but Derleth's badgering discouraged him from writing more fiction. He had a string of strokes in 1961 and then died in his sleep in August 1961. Carol remarried (becoming Carolyn Wakefield) and died of cancer after Smith's death.

The poet's ashes were buried beside or underneath a boulder to the immediate west of where his childhood home (destroyed by fire in 2005) stood; others were scattered in a stand of blue oaks near the boulder. There was no marker. Plaques honoring Smith were unveiled at the Auburn Placer County Library in 1985 and 2003 in Bicentennial Park in Auburn.

Roy A. Squires was named Smith's "west coast executor" by Jack L. Chalker, his "east coast executor." Several letterpress editions of individual Smith poems were published by Squires.

Prof William Dorman, the founder of CASiana Literary Enterprises, is Smith's literary estate is represented by his stepson. Many Smith stories have the copyright to several Smith novels, but some of them are now in the public domain.

See Lin Carter's entry on 'posthumous collaborations' of Smith (stories compiled by Lin Carter).

Source