Falling under the spell of the sword: de Camp’s Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers

I just received a book in the mail that I’ve had my eyes on for quite a while, and am now very pleased to own: L. Sprague de Camp’s Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (1976).

If there was a book made for me, this is it. It’s an out of print hardcover from Sauk City Wisconsin-based Arkham House Publishers, Inc, whose very name awakes fond thoughts of Cthulhu and other tentacled horrors. The book is a handsome little volume with great black and white cover art by Tim Kirk that would be right at home as interior art of a Moldvay/Cook Dungeons and Dragons manual.

The back of the dust-jacket features a list of books available from Arkham House, complete with prices and ordering information. Does anyone else love to read these old lists and wonder if you could still write to the specified address and receive a “catalog available on request” straight from the 1970s, folded up and shipped off by a geeky clerk with a tweed jacket and horn-rimmed spectacles? The interior features some great full-page black and white photographs of all the authors covered. There’s also a nice picture of Sprague himself on the inside back dust-jacket, complete with dated sports coat, ready to pontificate on some SFF subject.


I’m loving the contents so far, too, which includes an introductory essay “The Swords of Faerie” and subsequent pieces on William Morris, Lord Dunsany, H.P. Lovecraft, E.R. Eddison, Robert E. Howard, Fletcher Pratt, Clark Ashton Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, T.H. White, before concluding with “Conan’s Compeers,” an overview of REH sword and sorcery contemporaries like Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, and Henry Kuttner. I’m about halfway through and the only thing I’ve found a bit galling so far is the introduction by Lin Carter. I love Carter as an editor and am eternally grateful for his Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, his Flashing Swords anthologies, and his unmatched passion for the swords and sorcery genre, but his intro is a bit of a tug job on his friend de Camp, whom he compares favorably with all the greats. Writes Carter:

Among fantasy writers, he stands out virtually alone as being devoid of annoying eccentricities of taste or invention. It is possible to enthuse over Morris, Eddison, Lovecraft, Howard, Merritt, or Smith, while admitting serious flaws in their command of the narrative art. I do not think it is possible to do that with de Camp. He wrote purely to entertain, not to convert or crusade or complain. Behind his choice of the literary craft lies no neurotic compulsion, lurks no guilty fears as to his lack of masculine machismo, whimpers no inferiority complex’s hunger for attention.

If you can get past its hero-worshipping veneer, I think Carter’s analysis unwittingly hints at de Camp’s biggest flaw: His stuff is little more than lightweight escape fiction, at least in my limited exposure to it. I quite like The Tritonian Ring for example but it’s written with an ironic, half tongue-in-cheek style, and is certainly no "Red Nails." DeCamp’s writing style is journalism-solid but lacks the distinctive poetry and force of the authors mentioned above, which is why I believe his fiction hasn’t held up as well as the authors detailed herein.

I actually prefer de Camp the essayist and reviewer. His essays in Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers are more than mere thumbnail sketches, combining a fair degree of biographical detail while placing their works into a larger historical heroic fantasy context. They are in no way definitive, but serve as a nice summation and primer for looking further into their works. De Camp also provides us with end notes with references to biographies and letters that an interested reader can use for further exploration.

Some of the authors themselves come across as near-fantastic, swashbuckling figures almost equal to their heroic fantasy creations. Lord Dunsany was royalty who lived in a castle and fought in the Boer war. William Morris was an architect, decorator, designer, novelist, painter, poet, and printer who sought to revive his own peculiar romantic notion of the medieval workforce in the 19th century. De Camp comes across as candid, earnest, highly opinionated and at times playfully humorous in these essays, though he does layer in tough criticism, some warranted, some rather unfair and at times even harsh. But that comes with the territory.

I just finished up “Superman in a Bowler: E.R. Eddison” and am anticipating with half-dread “The Miscast Barbarian: Robert E. Howard,” which de Camp later expanded into his full-length biographical treatment Dark Valley Destiny. But having already read DVD and rather enjoying it despite its warts, nothing de Camp says about Howard is going to come as a shock. I’m looking forward rather more to his legendary garage chat with J.R.R. Tolkien over pipes and beer. More to come on this book later.