Tag Archives: Clark Ashton Smith

The Garden of Adompha

A mad king comes across a nude beauty in his insane flesh-garden. Virgil Finlay's cover illustration for "The Garden of Adompha."

Virgil Finlay was busy on this the April 1938 issue of Weird Tales The cover painting appears to illustrate Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Garden of Adompha,” one I had not previously read and which my attention was drawn by twitter user Perry Ruh:

You can read the story in the Internet Archive’s copy of the issue or, if the yellowed woodpulp is too much of a strain on the eyes, you can also read the transcribed version at Wikisourse.

Finlay was also busy on this this issue with interior illustrations, like this one for Seabury Quinn’s story “The Temple Dancer.”

An exotic oriental dancer created by Virgil Finlay in illustration of Seabury Quinn's story "The Temple Dancer."
“Butea-Jan, sole surviving candidate of the ordeal, must prove her fitness to be married to the god she served.”

It was a heck of an issue, containing not just these stories but others by Robert Bloch, Jack Williamson, Max Brod and Nathaniel Hawthorne (the last two reprints, obviously) and poems by both H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard! It is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.