An artist, poet, and prolific contributor to Weird Tales, Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1967) is an influential figure in the history of pulp fiction. A close correspondent and collaborator with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, Smith was widely celebrated as a master by his contemporaries. Back in print for the first time since 1971, Lost Worlds brings together twenty-three of Smith's classic stories, all of which were originally published in Weird Tales. Rather than center his works on heroes, Smith created fantastical worlds around which he built cycles of stories. Included here are tales from the realms of Averoigne, Zothique, Hyperborea, and others. Told in lush poetic prose, these haunting stories bring to life dark, dreamlike realms full of gothic monsters and mortals. Jeff VanderMeer provides an introduction for this Bison Books edition.

Jeff VanderMeer is a two-time World Fantasy Award winner whose books of fiction and edited anthologies have been finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award and the International Horror Guild Award.

“Jeff VanderMeer, who introduces the Nebraska reprints of Smith’s first two major collections of stories, admits to a love-hate relationship with the writer, largely because of his overlush and ‘hyperelevated’ style. And yet without it, Smith couldn’t create the dark beauty and alluring otherness of his best work. If you’ve never read Clark Ashton Smith before, start with either the collection A Rendezvous in Averoigne or the reissues of Out of Space and Time and Lost Worlds.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

"Incredible worlds, impossibly beautiful cities, and still more fantastic creatures. . . . Take one step across the threshold of his stories and you plunge into color, sound, taste, smell and texture: into language."—Ray Bradbury

"None strikes the note of cosmic horror as well as Clark Ashton Smith. In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living."—H. P. Lovecraft