This second volume of Clark Ashton Smith's complete original poetry contains the poems he wrote in the decades following the death in 1926 of his early mentor, George Sterling. Although much affected by Sterling's passing, Smith carried on in his poetic work, seeking new modes of expression and expanding his range beyond the cosmic and lyrical verse that had dominated his early career. Having taught himself French in the mid-1920's Smith began composing original poems in French. After focusing primarily on the writing of fantastic fiction from 1925-35, he resumed his poetic output with such...

In addition to being a prolific and innovative poet in his own right, Clark Ashton Smith was a noted translator of French and Spanish poetry. Teaching himself French in the mid-1920s, Smith undertook the ambitious program of translating the entirety of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) into English. Over the next several years he succeeded in translating all but six of the 157 poems that comprised the definitive (1868) edition of Les Fleurs du mal. His mentor George Sterling testified to the remarkable spiritual affinity between Smith and Baudelaire, rendering him...

H. P. Lovecraft's generous tutelage of younger literary colleagues earned him their lifelong devotion and admiration. Few profited more by his assistance than Robert Bloch, who went on to become the celebrated author of Psycho and other classic works of horror and suspense. Establishing a correspondence with Lovecraft when he was sixteen, Bloch learned so much about the craft of writing-and about other matters-that he later stated: "Lovecraft was my university."
This volume brings together Lovecraft's complete extant correspondence with Bloch as well as with such other young...