[2] [27 May 1928]

Dear H.P.L.:

I have been so busy of late, and life in certain aspects has absorbed me so deeply, that I've almost lost track of my correspondence. But I have the impression that I owe you a letter.

There isn't much news — I've been picking fruit for weeks, and have had no time and no energy to write or paint. Even my Baudelaire is hung up for the present. I had a letter from Orton [1] some time ago: he certainly isn't encouraging about the prospects of having the book published in N.Y. De Casseres,[2] on the other hand, is very enthusiastic and sanguine — thinks the volume might even incur the wrath of the official censors and thus become popular. He has offered to write an introduction — which would certainly be the introduction.

I hope you've found a little time for story-writing, Your stories are unique, and I hope you will bring out a volume of them some day. I'd like to see them in a form more permanent and dignified than the pages of W.T.

[. . .]

I think you asked about a book on Atlantis by one Lewis Spence. Of this I must confess that I have never heard. It is hard to get out-of-the-way books in Auburn, and I had no time to hunt anything up on my last visit in the Berkeley-San Francisco region, where I spent a weekend not long ago.

[. . .]

As ever,
Clark Ashton Smith

[P.S.] I am giving all the Baudelaire's English titles at De Casseres' suggestion. [. . .]

Footnotes

1. Vrest Orton, a correspondent of Lovecraft living in New York.
2. Benjamin De Casseres, poet, critic, and friend of Smith; he contributed the introduction to Selected Poems (1971).

From: Clark Ashton Smith: LETTERS TO H. P. LOVECRAFT, edited by and footnotes by Steve Behrends (July 1987) Necronomicon Press.