The Shadow of the Unattained

In 1911 the poet George Sterling was the focus of a thriving literary community in California that included Jack London, Mary Austin, and the aged Ambrose Bierce. When he received a letter and some manuscript poems from a young writer in Auburn named Clark Ashton Smith, he immediately recognized that a literary prodigy of tremendous potential had come his way, and for the remaining fifteen years of his life he nurtured Smith’s poetic talent with care and sensitivity. This volume presents, …