--- product_id: 1587039 title: "The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (Penguin Classics)" price: "102.73 DT" currency: TND in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/1587039-the-dark-eidolon-and-other-fantasies-penguin-classics store_origin: TN region: Tunisia --- # The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (Penguin Classics) **Price:** 102.73 DT **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (Penguin Classics) - **How much does it cost?** 102.73 DT with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tn](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/1587039-the-dark-eidolon-and-other-fantasies-penguin-classics) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description A much-awaited collection of prose and poetry from one of the great cosmic masters of the supernatural 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” or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis . 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. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Review: Wonderful in Every Way - This is so cool my eyeballs are bubbling! How awesome to see a beautiful painting by Smith on the cover of a Penguin Classics! I wou'd have preferred, perhaps, "The Basilisk" or his gorgeous painting of "Hyperborea," but this, although subtle in its excellent use of colours, is a lovely example of Smith's folk art style. Penguin asked S. T. to write an in-depth Introduction, knowing that this book will serve as first-reading of Smith for hundreds of new readers throughout the world, and the Introduction is quite good, shewing in part the Lovecraftian influence yet pointing out that Smith's art was unique unto himself, as it must be with all genuine artists of genius. The selection is very fine, and I am happy to see that the Penguin editors insisted that the extraordinary poem, "The Hashish-Eater; or The Apocalypse of Evil," was included after S. T. fear'd there would not be room in the wordage allow'd. One of my favourite features of the magnificent H. P. Lovecraft volumes from Penguin is the fascinating and informative Notes at the end of each book, discussing at times what inspir'd Lovecraft to write his story and where the work was first publish'd, &c; and in THE DARK EIDOLON AND OTHER FANTASIES we have a generous amount of notes explaining origin of story and containing snatches of correspondence from CAS and E'ch-Pi-El. In the annotations for "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" we find many delightful lines from HPL admiring the story, then in the notes for "The Last Incantation" we have snippets of a letter by Smith to Donald Wandrei; and additional quotations from Lovecraft's letters appear in the notes of further tales, all of which add to the history of these fantasies in a fascinating way. This is a perfect edition of Smith, and its publication will bring his poetry and prose to a new world-wide readership. Hopefully the book will be such a success that Penguin will ask S. T. for a second volume! I have posted the complete Contents of this Penguin Classics edition in a discussion at the Clark Ashton Smith Forum here at desertcart. [postscriptum: I am especially curious about ye Kindle edition of this book, for I don't own a Kindle, preferring always to read in book form. If you have purchas'd ye Kindle edition, I hope you will share your thoughts concerning it with a review here at desertcart. To see ye entire Contents, click on the "Look Inside" feature of ye Kindle edition.] Review: ... any collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories will be great per force - Almost any collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories will be great per force, and as such this is a fine collection. The introduction by Joshi, the presiding Lovecraft/Weird Tales scholar is excellent. The key feature of this collection, along with the scholarly introduction, is the fine cover art, which is a piece of Clark Ashton Smith's own art. Smith experimented in the plastic arts in addition to the literary, turning his hand to sculpture, drawing, and paint. Most of those experiments were unsuccessful in my estimation, consisting of bizarre macabre idols and such. This cover art is perhaps his best piece, and while primitive, fulfills its purpose well--but perhaps discordantly, as his stories tend to leave a somewhat darker impression in my mind than the jaunty picture! This pic would suit Jack Vance better. As a selection, this book is not really the best of CAS's tales in my opinion, but it does contain some of his highlights: Dark Eidolon, Last Incantation, Double Shadow, etc. Penguin collections attempt to give an author's "range" rather than the absolute best stories of a given author. This selection leaves out some of CAS's best stories, such as Necromancy in Naat in favor of some run of the mill horror tales that Stephen King or someone would have done better. The best of CAS is probably in the Zothique cycle, but he is always superior in fantasy than stock horror such Devotee of Evil. On the other hand, this collection does contain City of Singing Flame, a favorite of Harlan Ellison, but sort of an oddball that doesn't fit in to many of the other CAS collections. The book contains a helping of CAS's poetry. CAS, like Poe before him, considered himself a poet before a writer, but I find his poetry macabre and bereft of much poetic sentiment. In some cases, like the Last Incantation, his prose stories have more poetic sentiment than his verse. Still, we must thank Joshi for making a large sampling of CAS's poetry available to us at a very reasonable price. Almost any printing of CAS's work tends to go up in value after it goes out of print, so buy with confidence! ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #43,934 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #339 in Short Stories Anthologies #901 in Short Stories (Books) #1,511 in Classic Literature & Fiction | | Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 529 Reviews | ## Images ![The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (Penguin Classics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/717U6STZ29L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wonderful in Every Way *by W***. on March 25, 2014* This is so cool my eyeballs are bubbling! How awesome to see a beautiful painting by Smith on the cover of a Penguin Classics! I wou'd have preferred, perhaps, "The Basilisk" or his gorgeous painting of "Hyperborea," but this, although subtle in its excellent use of colours, is a lovely example of Smith's folk art style. Penguin asked S. T. to write an in-depth Introduction, knowing that this book will serve as first-reading of Smith for hundreds of new readers throughout the world, and the Introduction is quite good, shewing in part the Lovecraftian influence yet pointing out that Smith's art was unique unto himself, as it must be with all genuine artists of genius. The selection is very fine, and I am happy to see that the Penguin editors insisted that the extraordinary poem, "The Hashish-Eater; or The Apocalypse of Evil," was included after S. T. fear'd there would not be room in the wordage allow'd. One of my favourite features of the magnificent H. P. Lovecraft volumes from Penguin is the fascinating and informative Notes at the end of each book, discussing at times what inspir'd Lovecraft to write his story and where the work was first publish'd, &c; and in THE DARK EIDOLON AND OTHER FANTASIES we have a generous amount of notes explaining origin of story and containing snatches of correspondence from CAS and E'ch-Pi-El. In the annotations for "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" we find many delightful lines from HPL admiring the story, then in the notes for "The Last Incantation" we have snippets of a letter by Smith to Donald Wandrei; and additional quotations from Lovecraft's letters appear in the notes of further tales, all of which add to the history of these fantasies in a fascinating way. This is a perfect edition of Smith, and its publication will bring his poetry and prose to a new world-wide readership. Hopefully the book will be such a success that Penguin will ask S. T. for a second volume! I have posted the complete Contents of this Penguin Classics edition in a discussion at the Clark Ashton Smith Forum here at Amazon. [postscriptum: I am especially curious about ye Kindle edition of this book, for I don't own a Kindle, preferring always to read in book form. If you have purchas'd ye Kindle edition, I hope you will share your thoughts concerning it with a review here at Amazon. To see ye entire Contents, click on the "Look Inside" feature of ye Kindle edition.] ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ... any collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories will be great per force *by S***S on June 7, 2016* Almost any collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories will be great per force, and as such this is a fine collection. The introduction by Joshi, the presiding Lovecraft/Weird Tales scholar is excellent. The key feature of this collection, along with the scholarly introduction, is the fine cover art, which is a piece of Clark Ashton Smith's own art. Smith experimented in the plastic arts in addition to the literary, turning his hand to sculpture, drawing, and paint. Most of those experiments were unsuccessful in my estimation, consisting of bizarre macabre idols and such. This cover art is perhaps his best piece, and while primitive, fulfills its purpose well--but perhaps discordantly, as his stories tend to leave a somewhat darker impression in my mind than the jaunty picture! This pic would suit Jack Vance better. As a selection, this book is not really the best of CAS's tales in my opinion, but it does contain some of his highlights: Dark Eidolon, Last Incantation, Double Shadow, etc. Penguin collections attempt to give an author's "range" rather than the absolute best stories of a given author. This selection leaves out some of CAS's best stories, such as Necromancy in Naat in favor of some run of the mill horror tales that Stephen King or someone would have done better. The best of CAS is probably in the Zothique cycle, but he is always superior in fantasy than stock horror such Devotee of Evil. On the other hand, this collection does contain City of Singing Flame, a favorite of Harlan Ellison, but sort of an oddball that doesn't fit in to many of the other CAS collections. The book contains a helping of CAS's poetry. CAS, like Poe before him, considered himself a poet before a writer, but I find his poetry macabre and bereft of much poetic sentiment. In some cases, like the Last Incantation, his prose stories have more poetic sentiment than his verse. Still, we must thank Joshi for making a large sampling of CAS's poetry available to us at a very reasonable price. Almost any printing of CAS's work tends to go up in value after it goes out of print, so buy with confidence! ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ If you like Lovecraft ... *by W***D on August 15, 2023* ... give it a shot. Smith was a colleague of Lovecraft's, and many of these short stories echo the moods of Lovecraft's "cosmic horror" genre. I don't say you'll ever tire of reading HPL, but this might add variety to your reading along those lines. I found the short stories quite enjoyable, and occasional footnotes often added background or interest to the texts they annotate. The appeared in appendices, though, not on the pages they describe, and had no page references in the back of the book - it became tedious to figure out where to find a footnote that struck my interest. And, as much as I liked the short stories, the 'prose poems' and poetry did little for me. The former seemed more like notebook extracts, sketches of ideas for future development, and not full concepts developed to fruition. The latter, Smith's poetry, did nothing for me. I can't criticize Smith for that, since early public-school misery damaged my enjoyment of poetry beyond recovery. That's a "me" issue, not Smith's. Still, for me, those pages might as well have been blank. I'll look for more of Smith's work, but I admit I won't go too far out of my way for it. -- wiredweird --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.tn/products/1587039-the-dark-eidolon-and-other-fantasies-penguin-classics](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/1587039-the-dark-eidolon-and-other-fantasies-penguin-classics) --- *Product available on Desertcart Tunisia* *Store origin: TN* *Last updated: 2026-06-05*