Steve: Not to mention books currently in storage (about half my collection at this point, as there's just not bloody room enough where I'm at!!!)
Even cutting out the "horror/dark fantasy/fantasy classics", etc.... that'd be one heck of a list, I'm afraid (it fills up several pages in a list I drew up when moving... close to 20 pages, double-columned....)
Still... great idea there. And, taking the shorter route... favorite sff writers, with an example or two (and, yes, this will include those in the categories I list above):
H. P. Lovecraft -- basically everything I can get my hands on, fiction or otherwise
Clark Ashton Smith -- ditto
Harlan Ellison -- fiction and essays (I'm especially given to
Deathbird Stories,
Strange Wine, and
Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled for fiction, and
The Glass Teat volumes,
With an Edge in My Voice,
The Harlan Ellison Hornbook, and
Harlan Ellison's Watching for essays)
Robert A. Heinlein -- all of his fiction (collections and novels), selected essays
Isaac Asimov -- most of his sf, several of his books on science, and some of his other material
Robert E. Howard -- any fiction I can get
Joanna Russ -- especially fond of
The Female Man
Michael Moorcock -- again, any of his work I can lay my hands on, but I'm especially fond of Elric,
Mother London,
Blood, the Cornelius books, and
The Brothel in Rosenstrasse
J.R.R. Tolkien -- anything I can lay my hands on, but especially fond of
The Silmarillion and fascinated with
The History of Middle Earth (yes, this list includes books edited by C.R.R.T. and the new "Writing of the Hobbit" books)
A. Merritt -- any novels or collections of his fiction -- personal favorites being
The Face in the Abyss,
The Fox Woman and Other Stories,
Dwellers in the Mirage, and the original short story "The Moon Pool"
James Branch Cabell -- chiefly his
Biography of the Life of Manuel (25 volumes), but anything by Cabell I enjoy
Lord Dunsany -- have a partiality to his first 8 collections of fantasy tales (especially
The Gods of Pegāna and
Fifty-one Tales) and
The King of Elfland's Daughter
Arthur Machen -- particularly
The House of Souls
Algernon Blackwood -- collections including "The Willows", "The Wendigo", "The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf",
Incredible Adventures, and the John Silence stories
......
Well, that will do for a start, I think.....