100 Books I Keep Keeping... 40 Genius Loci and Other Tales
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Genius Loci and Other Tales by Clark Ashton Smith (1974)
So okay, I'm a hoarder.
I bought my first four Clark Ashton Smith paperbacks in my teens, from a small, shabby secondhand book shop (now, sadly, long gone), entranced by the wonderful wonderful cover art by Bruce Pennington that wrapped around to the back (see the scanned copies of all four below). I now have a full hardback collection, and pretty much all of my favourites are also available online. Buuuuuutttt........ I'm a hoarder, so the Panther paperbacks are still around here, shabbier but much loved.
Ashton Smith is very much associated with Lovecraft, personally I find him far more readable. Lovecraft does have the celebrated mythos and the world-building, but I love Ashton Smith's actual writing, arcane, ornate and yes, eldritch (and yes, I first found that word in one of his :) Probably not a style that meets current styles, but the creativity, sheer skill at visual imagery and gift for chilling ideas and dreamlike nightmare fuel, and a sly sense of humour that peeks through are wonderful, and the delicately archaic style works a treat for me. The title story also introduced me to the expression genius loci, as the same time giving it a lovely sinister gloss that I've never lost.
This is such a varied collection, some SF (very old-fashioned but with added horror that really sticks and lifts it), some sword-and-sorceryish fantasy (with added horror) and some straight out horror; some set in his own little universes (Hyperborea, futuristic Zothique, his own medieval ghost-ridden French province of Averoigne), some set loosely in his own time. Plus - just for fun - one delicate little fantasy story set in a tapestry. While my absolute favourite CAS is in another volume, this has several that come close :)
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