Clark Ashton Smith Original Texts eBook Collection (EPUB-MOBI)

This series presents Smith's fiction chronologically, based on composition rather than publication. The editorial decision to present these finely crafted tales chronologically, as opposed to thematically, was made in order to present Smith's fiction as part of a continuum - Smith's style evolved as he grew older, and gained access to the commercial markets. The ebb and flow of his prose over the course of his lifetime can be charted via the five volumes of this series.

Editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger have compared original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith's notes and letters, in order to prepare a definitive set of texts.

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Most of Smith's weird fiction falls into four series set variously in Hyperborea, Poseidonis, Averoigne and Zothique. Hyperborea, which is a lost continent of the Miocene period, and Poseidonis, which is a remnant of Atlantis, are much the same, with a magical culture characterized by bizarreness, cruelty, death and postmortem horrors. Averoigne is Smith's version of pre-modern France, comparable to James Branch Cabell's Poictesme. Zothique exists millions of years in the future. It is "the last continent of earth, when the sun is dim and tarnished." These tales have been compared to the Dying Earth sequence of Jack Vance.

In 1933 Smith began corresponding with Robert E. Howard, the Texan creator of Conan the Barbarian. From 1933-1937, Smith, Howard and Lovecraft were the leaders of the Weird Tales school of fiction, and corresponded frequently although they never met. The writer of oriental fantasies, E. Hoffman Price, is the only man known to have met all three in the flesh.