Not just any fantasy, horror, and science fiction author could impress H. P. Lovecraft into calling him 'unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living'. Clark Ashton Smith - autodidact, prolific poet, amateur philosopher, bizarre sculptor, and unmatched storyteller - simply wrote like no one else, before or since. This new collection of his very best tales and poems is selected and introduced by supernatural literature scholar S. T. Joshi and allows readers to encounter Smith's visionary brand of fantastical, phantasmagorical worlds, each one filled with invention, terror and a superlative sense of metaphysical wonder.