Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) was the pen-name of **Arthur Llewellyn Jones**, a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella *The Great God Pan* (1890; 1894) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror, with Stephen King describing it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language." He is also well known for "The Bowmen", a short story that was widely read as fact, creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.

Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Caerleon, Monmouthshire. The house of his birth, opposite the Olde Bull Inn in The Square at Caerleon, is adjacent to the Priory Hotel and is today marked with a commemorative blue plaque. The beautiful landscape of Monmouthshire (which he usually referred to by the name of the medieval Welsh kingdom, Gwent), with its associations of Celtic, Roman, and medieval history, made a powerful impression on him, and his love of it is at the heart of many of his works.

Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, *The Great God Pan*. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and consequently sold well, going into a second edition.

In 1899, Machen's wife Amy died of cancer after a long period of illness. This had a devastating effect on Machen. He only gradually recovered from his loss over the next year, partially through his close friendship with A. E. Waite. It was through Waite's influence that Machen joined at this time the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, though Machen's interest in the organization was not lasting or very deep.

Machen's literary significance is substantial; his stories have been translated into many languages and reprinted in short story anthologies countless times. In the early 1970s, a paperback reprint of *The Three Impostors* in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series brought him to the notice of a new generation. More recently, the small press has continued to keep Machen's work in print. In 2010, to mark the 150 years since Machen's birth, two volumes of Machen's work were republished in the prestigious Library of Wales series.

Literary critics such as Wesley D. Sweetser and S. T. Joshi see Machen's works as a significant part of the late Victorian revival of the gothic novel and the decadent movement of the 1890s, bearing direct comparison to the themes found in contemporary works like Robert Louis Stevenson's *Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde*, Bram Stoker's *Dracula*, and Oscar Wilde's *The Picture of Dorian Gray*. At the time authors like Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and Arthur Conan Doyle were all admirers of Machen's works. He is also usually noted in the better studies of Anglo-Welsh literature. The French writer Paul-Jean Toulet translated Machen's *The Great God Pan* into French and visited Machen in London. Charles Williams was also a devotee of Machen's work, which inspired Williams' own fiction.

***Cadabra Releases:***

The Great God Pan

The White People

## Selected works

*In approximate order of composition, with date of publication:*
* *The Chronicle of Clemendy* (1888): fantasy tales within a frame story of a rural Welsh drinking fraternity with mystical roots.
* "The Lost Club" (1890): short story about a secret London society and its ritual disappearances of members.
* *The Great God Pan* (written 1890–1894; published 1894): short horror novel. First published together with "The Inmost Light" as Volume V in John Lane's Keynotes Series.
* "The Inmost Light" (1894): short horror story. A scientist imprisons his wife's soul in a shining jewel, letting *something else* into her untenanted body, but the jewel is stolen.
* "The Shining Pyramid" (1895): short horror story. Strange arrangements of stones appear at the edge of a young man's property. He and a friend attempt to decipher their meaning before it is too late.
* *The Three Impostors* (1895): horror novel incorporating several short stories, including "The Novel of the White Powder" and "The Novel of the Black Seal", which have often been anthologised separately. Centers on the search for a man with spectacles.
	+ "The Novel of the Black Seal": a precursor of H. P. Lovecraft in its subject matter—the protagonist gradually uncovers the secrets of a hidden pre- and non-human race hiding in the Welsh hills, and the true nature of a hybrid, idiot child fathered by one of them.
	+ "The Novel of the White Powder": a man's behaviour takes a strange turn after he starts taking a new prescription. His sister doesn't know if this is a good thing or a bad one.
* "The Red Hand" (1895): short detective/horror story featuring the main characters from *The Three Impostors*. It focuses on a murder performed with an ancient stone axe.
* *The Hill of Dreams* (written 1895–1897; published 1907): novel delineating the dark, mystical spiraling madness, awe, sensuality, horror and ecstasy of an artist. Generally considered Machen's masterpiece.
* *Ornaments in Jade* (written 1897; published 1924): prose poems, some of which hint at dark pagan powers.
* "The White People" (written 1899; published 1904): short horror story. Presented as a young girl's diary, detailing her increasingly deep delvings into witchcraft. Often described as one of the greatest of all horror short stories.
* *Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature* (written 1899; published 1902): literary tract detailing Machen's philosophy of literature and its capacity for "ecstasy".
* *A Fragment of Life* (written 1899–1904; published 1904): short novel. A young couple repudiate the banalities of material life in favour of the spiritual.
* *The House of the Hidden Light* (Written in 1904 with Arthur Edward Waite. Only three copies were published. Reprinted in an edition of 350 copies by Tartarus Press, 2003): book of coded and mystical correspondence.
* *The Secret Glory* (written 1899–1908; published 1922): novel. A public-school boy becomes fascinated by tales of the Holy Grail and escapes from his repressive school in search of a deeper meaning to life.
* "The Bowmen" (1914): in this story, written and published during World War I, the ghosts of archers from the battle of Agincourt, led by Saint George, come to the aid of British troops. This is cited as the origin of the Angels of Mons legend.
* "The Great Return" (1915): short story. The Holy Grail returns to a Welsh village.
* *The Terror* (1917): short horror novel. Rural supernatural horror set in wartime Britain, where a series of unexplained countryside murders occur with no sign of who or what is responsible.
* *Far Off Things* (1922): first volume of autobiography.
* *Things Near and Far* (1923): second volume of autobiography.
* "Out of the Earth" (1923): short horror story regarding the malefic brutality of the mythical "Little People", who are emulating World War I.
* *The London Adventure* (1924): third and final volume of autobiography.
* *Dog and Duck* (1924): essays.
* *The Glorious Mystery* (1924): essays and vignettes.
* *The Canning Wonder* (1925): non-fiction study of the eighteenth-century mystery of the disappearance of Elizabeth Canning. Machen concludes that Canning was lying about some or all of her exploits.
* *Dreads and Drolls* (1926): essays (expanded edition, Tartarus Press: 2007).
* *Notes and Queries* (1926): essays.
* *Tom O'Bedlam and His Song* (1930): essays.
* "Opening the Door" (1931): short story. Tale of a man's mysterious transcendence into some outer faery realm.
* *The Green Round* (1933): novel. A man is haunted by a dwarf after visiting the "green round" on a beach.
* "N" (1934): short story. An encounter in London of a hidden fairyland.
* *The Children of the Pool* (1936): short story collection including the late-period horror stories "Change" and "Out of the Picture".
* *Arthur Machen & Montgomery Evans: Letters of a Literary Friendship, 1923–1947* (Kent State University Press, 1994): correspondence.
* *Bridles and Spurs* (1951): essays.