Clark Ashton Smith 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 in 1912
Smith as depicted in Wonder Stories in 1930
"The Hunters from Beyond", one of Clark Ashton Smith's best-known stories, was first published in the October 1932 issue of Strange Tales.
First edition
George Sterling was an American writer based in the San Francisco, California Bay Area and Carmel-by-the-Sea. He was considered a prominent poet and playwright and proponent of Bohemianism during the first quarter of the twentieth century. His work was admired by writers as diverse as Ambrose Bierce, Robinson Jeffers, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Clark Ashton Smith.
Sterling shortly before his death in 1926
Carrie Sterling and others at Sterling Cottage.
Mary Austin, Jack London, George Sterling, and James Hopper.
George Sterling posed for an illustration by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson which appeared in a printing of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
