Of Smith and Sime and Others

The mail brought me The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith. I've read fragments of Smith's poetry, but nothing quite as complete as this.

The book is also of interest as it has a couple of examples of Smith's artwork. In addition to fiction and poetry, he also did sketches, paintings and sculpture. Some of his work can be seen at The Eldritch Dark. This got me to thinking about other art associated with fantasy writing.

The style reminded me of Sidney Sime. Sime was an artist that did a lot of stuff for Lord Dunsany, a man who inspired H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and others. Unfortunately, before the internet, I never was able to see much of his stuff. He is mentioned often in reprints, even in Lovecraft's own tales (see Pickman's Model, for example), but until I got a Penguin edition of Dunsany's works, I never had a Dunsany book with his favorite artist! Here's a site that has several galleries of his work.

Another favorite "pulp artist" is Virgil Finlay. He did a lot of work for the stories of A. Merritt, H.P. Lovecraft and others. Some samples of his work can be found here. A friend of mine passed on the following quote by Algis Budrys regarding Finlay's amazing works:

To imagine Virgil Finlay painstakingly stippling a two-page illustrations, knowing in advance that it would be manhandled by the Street & Smith pressmen and printed on paper roughly equivalent in quality to Scott Towels, is to picture a man as his own tormentor.

Finally, there was Hannes Bok. Also associated with Merritt, to the point of co-writing some works (fragments, unfinished by Merritt at the time of his death) and producing a few works of fiction on his one with a strong Merritt-esque flavor. Alas, no site devoted to his works, but this Wikipedia entry has some samples.

The appreciation of certain authors is enhanced by works of art that are associated with them!