Arthur Machen
Encyclopedia
Arthur Machen was a Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 author and mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural
Supernatural fiction
Supernatural fiction is a literary genre exploiting or requiring as plot devices or themes some contradictions of the commonplace natural world and materialist assumptions about it....

, fantasy, and horror fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...

. His novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 The Great God Pan
The Great God Pan
"The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication in 1894...

(1890; 1894) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. (Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

 called it "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language".) He is also well known for his leading role in creating the legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

 of the Angels of Mons
Angels of Mons
The Angels of Mons is a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I...

.

Early years

Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones, in Caerleon
Caerleon
Caerleon is a suburban village and community, situated on the River Usk in the northern outskirts of the city of Newport, South Wales. Caerleon is a site of archaeological importance, being the site of a notable Roman legionary fortress, Isca Augusta, and an Iron Age hill fort...

, Monmouthshire
Monmouthshire (historic)
Monmouthshire , also known as the County of Monmouth , is one of thirteen ancient counties of Wales and a former administrative county....

, though he usually referred to the county by its Welsh name Gwent
Gwent (county)
Gwent is a preserved county and a former local government county in south-east Wales. It was formed on 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, and was named after the ancient Kingdom of Gwent....

. The beautiful landscape of Monmouthshire, with its associations of Celt
Celt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....

ic, Roman, and medieval history, made a powerful impression on him, and his love of it is at the heart of many of his works.

Machen's father, John Edward Jones, became vicar of the tiny church of Llandewi Fach, near Caerleon, and his son was brought up at the rectory there. Jones had adopted his wife's maiden name, Machen, to inherit a legacy, legally becoming "Jones-Machen"; his son was baptised under that name and later used a shortened version of his full name, Arthur Machen, as a pen-name.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School
Hereford Cathedral School
Hereford Cathedral School is an independent, co-educational day school, with around 520 pupils aged between the ages of 11 and 18. It has four houses, named Langford , Stuart , Somerset and Cornwall Hereford Cathedral School is an independent, co-educational day school, with around 520 pupils aged...

, where he received an excellent classical education. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries
Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance...

. Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London.

In 1884, he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron
Heptameron
The Heptameron is a collection of 72 short stories written in French by Marguerite of Navarre, published in 1558. It has the form of a frame narrative and was inspired by The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio...

of Marguerite de Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre , also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre...

, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville
Béroalde de Verville
François Béroalde de Verville was a French Renaissance novelist, poet and intellectual. He was the son of Matthieu Brouard , called "Béroalde", a professor of Agrippa d'Aubigné and Pierre de l'Estoile and a Huguenot; his mother, Marie Bletz, was the niece of the humanist and Hebrew scholar...

, and the Memoirs
Histoire de ma vie
Histoire de ma vie is both the memoir and autobiography of Giacomo Casanova, a famous 18th century Italian adventurer...

of Casanova
Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie , is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century...

. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.

In 1887, Machen married Amy Hogg, an unconventional music teacher with a passion for the theatre, who had literary friends in London's bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 circles. Hogg had introduced Machen to the writer and occultist A. E. Waite, who was to become one of Machen's closest friends. Machen also made the acquaintance of other literary figures, such as M. P. Shiel
M. P. Shiel
Matthew Phipps Shiel was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name....

 and Edgar Jepson
Edgar Jepson
Edgar Alfred Jepson was an English writer, principally of mainstream adventure and detective fiction, but also of some supernatural and fantasy stories that are better remembered. He used a pseudonym R...

. Soon after his marriage, Machen began to receive a series of legacies from Scottish relatives that allowed him to gradually devote more time to writing.

Literary decadence in the 1890s

Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

, some of which used gothic or fantastic
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 themes. This led to his first major success, "The Great God Pan
The Great God Pan
"The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication in 1894...

". It was published in 1894 by John Lane
John Lane (publisher)
-Biography:Originally from Devon, where he was born into a farming family, Lane moved to London already in his teens. While working as a clerk at the Railway Clearing House, he acquired knowledge as an autodidact....

 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 subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.

Machen next produced The Three Impostors
The Three Impostors
The Three Impostors is an episodic novel by British horror fiction writer Arthur Machen, first published in 1895 in The Bodley Head's Keynote Series...

, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

 later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams
The Hill of Dreams
-Plot summary:The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain...

, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story "The White People
The White People
"The White People" is a fantasy-horror short story by the Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Written in the late 1890s, it was first published in Horlick's Magazine—of which Machen's friend A. E...

", and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.

Tragedy and acting: 1899–1910

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
Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. As his biographer, R.A...

. It was through Waite's influence that Machen joined at this time the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...

, though Machen's interest in the organization was not lasting or very deep.

Machen's recovery was further helped by his sudden change of career, becoming an actor in 1901 and a member of Frank Benson's company of travelling players, a profession which took him round the country. This led in 1903 to a second marriage, to Dorothie Purefoy Hudleston, which brought Machen much happiness. Machen managed to find a publisher in 1902 for his earlier written work Hieroglyphics, an analysis of the nature of literature, which concluded that true literature must convey "ecstasy". In 1906 Machen's literary career began once more to flourish as the book The House of Souls collected his most notable works of the nineties and brought them to a new audience. He also published a satirical work, Dr Stiggins: His Views and Principles, generally considered one of his weakest works.

Machen also was at this time investigating Celtic Christianity
Celtic Christianity
Celtic Christianity or Insular Christianity refers broadly to certain features of Christianity that were common, or held to be common, across the Celtic-speaking world during the Early Middle Ages...

, the Holy Grail
Holy Grail
The Holy Grail is a sacred object figuring in literature and certain Christian traditions, most often identified with the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers...

 and King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

. Publishing his views in Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas , nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde...

's The Academy, for which he wrote regularly, Machen concluded that the legends of the Grail actually were based on dim recollections of the rites of the Celtic Church. These ideas also featured strongly in the novel The Secret Glory which he wrote at this time, marking the first use of the idea in fiction of the Grail surviving into modern times in some form, an idea much utilised ever since, as by Charles Williams
Charles Williams (UK writer)
Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings.- Biography :...

 (War in Heaven), Dan Brown
Dan Brown
Dan Brown is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories...

 (The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...

) and George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...

 (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 American adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas. It is the third film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford reprises the title role and Sean Connery plays Indiana's father, Henry...

). In 1907, The Hill of Dreams
The Hill of Dreams
-Plot summary:The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain...

, generally considered Machen's masterpiece, was finally published, though it was not recognized much at the time.

The next few years saw Machen continue with acting in various companies and with journalistic work, but he was finding it increasingly hard to earn a living and his legacies were long exhausted. Machen was also attending literary gatherings such as the New Bohemians and the Square Club
Square Club (writers)
The Square Club for writers was a monthly dining club that met in London, from 1908/9 to about 1913/4, and included many of the established younger-generation authors. The founders included Edward Garnett, G. K. Chesterton and Conal O'Riordan...

.

Journalism and the Great War: 1910–1921

Finally Machen accepted a full-time journalist's job at Alfred Harmsworth's Evening News
Evening News (London)
Evening News, formerly known as The Evening News, was an evening newspaper published in London from 1881 to 1980, reappearing briefly in 1987. It became highly popular under the control of the Harmsworth brothers. For a long time it maintained the largest daily sale of any evening newspaper in London...

in 1910. In February 1912 his son Hilary was born, followed by a daughter Janet in 1917. The coming of war in 1914 saw Machen return to public prominence for the first time in twenty years due to the publication of "The Bowmen" and the subsequent publicity surrounding the "Angels of Mons
Angels of Mons
The Angels of Mons is a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I...

" episode. He published a series of stories capitalizing on this success, most of which were morale-boosting propaganda, but the most notable, The Great Return (1915), and the novella The Terror (1917), were more accomplished. He also published a series of autobiographical articles during the war, later reprinted in book form as Far Off Things. During the war years Machen also met and championed the work of a fellow Welshman, Caradoc Evans
Caradoc Evans
David Caradoc Evans , was a Welsh story writer, novelist and playwright. Caradoc met and later married the Countess Helene Marguerite Barcynska, who wrote romantic novels under the name Oliver Sandys...

.

In general, though, Machen thoroughly disliked work at the newspaper, and it was only the need to earn money for his family which kept him at it. The money came in useful, allowing him to move in 1919 to a bigger house with a garden, in St John's Wood
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district of north-west London, England, in the City of Westminster, and at the north-west end of Regent's Park. It is approximately 2.5 miles north-west of Charing Cross. Once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, it was later owned by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem...

, which became a noted location for literary gatherings attended by friends such as the painter Augustus John
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....

, Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...

, and Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London...

. Machen's dismissal from the Evening News in 1921 came as a relief in one sense, though it caused financial problems. Machen, however, was recognized as a great Fleet Street character by his contemporaries, and he remained in demand as an essay writer for much of the twenties.

The Machen Boom of the Twenties

The year 1922 also saw a revival in Machen's literary fortunes. The Secret Glory was finally published, as was his autobiography Far Off Things, and new editions of Machen's Casanova, The House of Souls and The Hill of Dreams all came out. Machen's works had now found a new audience and publishers in America, and a series of requests for republications of books started to come in. Vincent Starrett
Vincent Starrett
Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett , known as Vincent Starrett, was an American writer and newspaperman.- Biography :...

, James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell, ; April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell was well regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when his...

, and Carl Van Vechten
Carl van Vechten
Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.-Biography:...

 were American Machen devotees who helped in this process.

Another sign of his rising fortunes was the publication in 1923 of a collected edition of his works and a bibliography. That year also saw the publication of a recently completed second volume of autobiography, Things Near and Far—the final volume, The London Adventure, being published in 1924. Machen's earlier works suddenly started becoming much sought-after collectors' items at this time, a position they have held ever since. In 1924 he issued a collection of bad reviews of his own work, with very little commentary, under the title Precious Balms. In this period of prosperity Machen's home saw many visitors and social gatherings and Machen made new friends such as Oliver Stonor
Oliver Stonor
Oliver Stonor was an English novelist, reviewer, translator, and man of letters. He was briefly the husband of the Irish writer Norah Hoult....

.

Final years: 1926–1947

By 1926 the boom in republication was mostly over, and Machen's income dropped. He continued republishing earlier works in collected editions, as well as writing essays and articles for various magazines and newspapers and contributing forewords and introductions to both his own and other writers' works, but produced little new fiction. In 1927, he became a manuscript reader for the publisher Ernest Benn, which brought in a much-needed regular income until 1933.

In 1929, Machen and his family moved away from London to Amersham
Amersham
Amersham is a market town and civil parish within Chiltern district in Buckinghamshire, England, 27 miles north west of London, in the Chiltern Hills. It is part of the London commuter belt....

 in Buckinghamshire, but they still faced financial hardship. He received some recognition for his literary work when he received a Civil List pension of one hundred pounds in 1932, but the loss of work from Benns a year later made things difficult once more. A few more collections of Machen's shorter works were published in the thirties, partially as a result of the championing of Machen by John Gawsworth
John Gawsworth
John Gawsworth , a pseudonym of Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong , was a British writer, poet and compiler of anthologies, both of poetry and of short stories. He also used the pseudonym Orpheus Scrannel...

, who also began work on a biography of Machen that was only published in 2005 thanks to the Friends of Arthur Machen.

Machen's financial difficulties were only finally ended by the literary appeal launched in 1943 for his eightieth birthday. The initial names on the appeal show the general recognition of Machen's stature as a distinguished man of letters, as they included Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...

, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, Walter de la Mare
Walter de la Mare
Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....

, Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...

, and John Masefield
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...

. The success of the appeal allowed Machen to live the last few years of his life, until 1947, in relative comfort.

Philosophy and religion

From the beginning of his literary career, Machen espoused a mystical
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 belief that the humdrum ordinary world hid a more mysterious and strange world beyond. His gothic and decadent works of the 1890s concluded that the lifting of this veil could lead to madness, sex, or death, and usually a combination of all three. Machen's later works became somewhat less obviously full of gothic trappings, but for him investigations into mysteries invariably resulted in life-changing transformation and sacrifice. Machen loved the medieval world view because he felt it combined deep spirituality alongside a rambunctious earthiness.

Machen was a great enthusiast for literature that expressed the "rapture, beauty, adoration, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire for the unknown" that he summed up in the word ecstasy. His main passions were for writers and writing he felt achieved this, an idiosyncratic list which included the Mabinogion
Mabinogion
The Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...

and other medieval romances
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

, François Rabelais
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...

, Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...

, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

, Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, Thomas de Quincey
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...

, Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

, Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

, Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, and Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

. Those writers who failed to achieve this, or far worse did not even attempt it, received short shrift from Machen.

Machen's strong opposition to a materialistic viewpoint is obvious in many of his works, marking him as part of neo-romanticism
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...

. He was deeply suspicious of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

, commerce
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...

, and Puritanism, all of which were anathema to Machen's conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

, bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

, mystical, and ritualistic temperament. Machen's virulent satirical streak against things he disliked has been regarded as a weakness in his work, and rather dating, especially when it comes to the fore in works such as Dr Stiggins. Similarly, some of his propagandistic First World War stories also have little appeal to a modern audience.

Machen, brought up as the son of a Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 clergyman, always held Christian beliefs, though accompanied by a fascination with sensual mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

; his interests in paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

 and the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

 were especially prominent in his earliest works. Machen was well read on such matters as alchemy
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

, the kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

, and Hermeticism
Hermeticism
Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...

, and these occult interests formed part of his close friendship with A. E. Waite
Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. As his biographer, R.A...

. Machen, however, was always very down to earth, requiring substantial proof that a supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 event had occurred, and was thus highly sceptical of Spiritualism. Unlike many of his contemporaries, such as Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, his disapproval of the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

 and his admiration for the medieval world and its Roman Catholic ritualism did not fully tempt him away from Anglicanism
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...

—though he never fitted comfortably into the Victorian Anglo-Catholic world.

The death of his first wife led him to a spiritual crossroads, and he experienced a series of mystical events. After his experimentation with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the orthodox ritual of the Church became ever more important to him, gradually defining his position as a High Church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...

 Anglican who was able to incorporate elements from his own mystical experiences, Celtic Christianity
Celtic Christianity
Celtic Christianity or Insular Christianity refers broadly to certain features of Christianity that were common, or held to be common, across the Celtic-speaking world during the Early Middle Ages...

, and readings in literature and legend into his thinking.

Legacy and influence

Machen's literary significance is substantial; his stories have been translated into many languages and reprinted in short story anthologies countless times. In the sixties, a paperback reprint in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series
Ballantine Adult Fantasy series
The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was an imprint of Ballantine Books. Launched in 1969 , the series reissued a number of works of fantasy literature, which were out of print or dispersed in back issues of pulp magazines , in cheap paperback form—including works...

 brought him to the notice of a new generation. More recently, the small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

 has continued to keep Machen's work in print. In 2010 two volumes of Machen's work were republished in the prestigious Library of Wales series.

Literary critics such as Wesley D. Sweetser
Wesley D. Sweetser
Dr Wesley Duaine Sweetser was an English critic.Born in National City, California, USA, he attended the University of Colorado where he gained a Ph.D. in 1958 for a thesis on Welsh writer Arthur Machen...

 and S. T. Joshi
S. T. Joshi
Sunand Tryambak Joshi — known as S. T. Joshi — is an award-winning Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction...

 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
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...

's Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...

, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine...

. At the time authors like Wilde, William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

, and Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

 were all admirers of Machen's works. He is also usually noted in the better studies of Anglo-Welsh literature
Anglo-Welsh literature
Anglo-Welsh literature and Welsh writing in English are terms used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers. It has been recognised as a distinctive entity only since the 20th century...

. The French writer Paul-Jean Toulet
Paul-Jean Toulet
Paul-Jean Toulet was a French poet, novelist and feuilleton writer.- Life and works :Paul-Jean Toulet was a descendant of Charlotte Corday, and son of a wealthy man living in Mauritius...

 translated Machen's "The Great God Pan
The Great God Pan
"The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication in 1894...

" into French and visited Machen in London. Charles Williams was also a devotee of Machen's work, which inspired Williams' own fiction.

His popularity in 1920s America has been noted, and Machen's work was an influence on the development of the pulp horror found in magazines like Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....

and on such notable fantasy writers as James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell, ; April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell was well regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when his...

, Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

, Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

, Frank Belknap Long
Frank Belknap Long
Frank Belknap Long was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to...

 (who wrote a tribute to Machen in verse, "On Reading Arthur Machen"), and Donald Wandrei
Donald Wandrei
Donald Albert Wandrei was an American science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction writer, poet and editor. He wrote as Donald Wandrei. He was the older brother of science fiction writer and artist Howard Wandrei...

.

His significance was recognized by H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....

, who in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature
Supernatural Horror in Literature
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a long essay by the celebrated horror writer H. P. Lovecraft surveying the field of horror fiction. It was written between November 1925 and May 1927 and revised in 1933-1934. It was first published in 1927 in the one-shot magazine The Recluse...

" named Machen as one of the four "modern masters" of supernatural horror (with Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...

, Lord Dunsany
Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany was an Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany...

, and M. R. James
M. R. James
Montague Rhodes James, OM, MA, , who used the publication name M. R. James, was an English mediaeval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge and of Eton College . He is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre...

). Machen's influence on Lovecraft's own work was substantial. Lovecraft's reading of Machen in the early 1920s led him away from his earlier Dunsanian writing towards the development of what became the Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...

. Machen's use of a contemporary Welsh or London background in which sinister ancient horrors lurk and are capable of interbreeding with modern people obviously helped inspire Lovecraft's similar use of a New England background. Machen's story "The White People
The White People
"The White People" is a fantasy-horror short story by the Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Written in the late 1890s, it was first published in Horlick's Magazine—of which Machen's friend A. E...

" includes strange references to curious unknown rites and beings, an idea Lovecraft uses frequently in the mythos.

Lovecraft pays tribute to the influence by directly incorporating some of Machen's creations and references, such as Nodens
Nodens (Cthulhu Mythos)
Nodens is a fictional character in the Cthulhu Mythos. Based on the Celtic deity, Nodens, is the creation of H. P...

 and Aklo
Aklo
Aklo is a fictional language.-Overview:Aklo is a secret language, possibly an artificial cipher or one used by a non-human race, associated with the writing of forbidden texts and evil cultists....

, into his Cthulhu Mythos and using similar plotlines, most notably seen by a comparison of "The Dunwich Horror
The Dunwich Horror
"The Dunwich Horror" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales . It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts...

" to "The Great God Pan
The Great God Pan
"The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication in 1894...

" and of "The Whisperer in Darkness
The Whisperer in Darkness
"The Whisperer in Darkness" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written February–September 1930, it was first published in Weird Tales, August 1931. Similar to "The Colour Out of Space" , it is a blend of horror and science fiction...

" to "The Novel of the Black Seal". Other Lovecraft tales with a debt or reference to Machen include "The Call of Cthulhu
The Call of Cthulhu
The Call of Cthulhu is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, in February 1928.-Inspiration:...

", "The Festival
The Festival (short story)
"The Festival" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft written in October 1923 and published in the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales. It is considered to be one of the first of his Cthulhu Mythos stories.-Inspiration:...

", "Cool Air
Cool Air
"Cool Air" is a short story by the American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in March 1926 and published in the March 1928 issue of Tales of Magic and Mystery.-Inspiration:...

", "The Descendant
The Descendant (short story)
"The Descendant" is a story fragment by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, believed to have been written in 1927. It was first published in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death.-Inspiration:...

", and "The Colour Out of Space
The Colour Out of Space
"The Colour Out of Space" is a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft in March 1927. In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts...

".

His intense, atmospheric stories of horror and the supernatural have been read and enjoyed by many modern horror and fantasy writers, influencing directly Peter Straub
Peter Straub
Peter Francis Straub is an American author and poet, most famous for his work in the horror genre. His horror fiction has received numerous literary honors such as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award, placing him among the most-honored horror authors in...

, Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

, Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell
John Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction author.Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today", while S. T...

, Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, editor and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. His disillusionment with the medical profession can be seen in the stories "The Fourth Seal" and "Into...

, "Sarban
Sarban (author)
John William Wall , pen name Sarban, was a British writer and diplomat. Wall's diplomatic career lasted more than thirty years, but his writing career as Sarban was brief and not prolific, ending during the early 1950s...

" (John William Wall), Graham Joyce
Graham Joyce
Graham Joyce is an English writer of speculative fiction and the recipient of numerous awards for both his novels and short stories. He grew up in a small mining village just outside of Coventry to a working class family. After receiving a B.Ed. from Bishop Lonsdale College in 1977 and a M.A. from...

, Simon Clark
Simon Clark
Simon Clark is a horror novel writer from Doncaster, England. One of his most notable works is the novel The Night of the Triffids.Clark has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and British Fantasy Award...

, Tim Lebbon
Tim Lebbon
Tim Lebbon is a horror and dark fantasy writer, and a judge at the 2005 World Fantasy Convention.-Life and career:Lebbon was born in London. His short story "Reconstructing Amy" won the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction in 2001 and his novel Dusk won the 2007 August Derleth Award from the...

, Mark Samuels, and T. E. D. Klein
T. E. D. Klein
Theodore "Eibon" Donald Klein is an American horror writer and editor.Klein has published very few works, but they have all achieved positive notice for their meticulous construction and subtle use of horror: critic S. T...

, to name but a few. Klein's novel The Ceremonies was partly based on Machen's "The White People", and Straub's novel Ghost Story
Ghost Story (Straub novel)
Ghost Story is a horror novel by Peter Straub that was published in 1979 by Coward, McCann and Geoghegan. It was adapted into a film in 1981.The novel was a watershed in Straub's career...

was influenced by "The Great God Pan".

Machen's influence is not limited to genre fiction, however. Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

 recognized Machen as a great writer, and through him Machen has had an influence on magic realism
Magic realism
Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

. He was also a major influence on Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...

 and Javier Marías
Javier Marías
Javier Marías is a Spanish novelist. He is also a translator and columnist.-Life:Javier Marías was born in Madrid. His father was the philosopher Julián Marías, who was briefly imprisoned and then banned from teaching for opposing Franco...

. He was one of the most significant figures in the life of the Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

 Sir John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...

, who attributed to Machen his conversion to High Church Anglicanism, an important part of his philosophy and poetry. Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet.-Life:Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora Hudleston...

 (a niece of Machen's second wife, Purefoy) admired Machen and was influenced by him, as is his great-granddaughter, the contemporary artist Tessa Farmer
Tessa Farmer
Tessa Farmer is an artist based in London. Her work, made from insect carcasses, plant roots and other found natural materials, comprises hanging installations depicting Boschian battles between insects and tiny winged skeletal humanoids.She received her BA in 2000 and her MA in 2003 from The...

.

Machen was also a pioneer in psychogeography
Psychogeography
Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Another definition is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for...

, due to his interest in the interconnection between landscape and the mind. His strange wanderings in Wales and London recorded in his beautiful prose make him of great interest to writers on this subject, especially those focusing on London, such as Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...

 and Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award...

. Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...

 wrote an exploration of Machen's mystical experiences in his work Snakes and Ladders
A Disease of Language
A Disease of Language is the 2005 collection of adaptations by Eddie Campbell of two of Alan Moore's performances, The Birth Caul and Snakes and Ladders . It is rounded by a 2002 interview of Moore conducted by Campbell for Egomania 2 and sketches...

. Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

 loved Machen's works, feeling they contained "Magickal" truth, and put them on the reading list for his students, though Machen, who never met him, detested Crowley. Other occultists, such as Kenneth Grant
Kenneth Grant
Kenneth Grant was a British occultist, novelist, and poet, who with his partner, the artist Steffi Grant, headed the magical order previously known as the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis but which is now referred to as the Typhonian Order.-Occult background:Grant's occult experiences began in 1939...

, also find Machen an inspiration. Far closer to Machen's personal mystical world view was his effect on his friend Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill was an English Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist known for her numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, in particular Christian mysticism....

, who reflected some of Machen's thinking in her highly influential book Mysticism.

In music, the composer John Ireland
John Ireland (composer)
John Nicholson Ireland was an English composer.- Life :John Ireland was born in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Manchester, into a family of Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father, Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 70 at John's birth...

 found Machen's works to be a life-changing experience that directly influenced much of his composition. Mark E. Smith
Mark E. Smith
Mark Edward Smith is the lead singer, lyricist, frontman, and only constant member of the English post-punk band The Fall.-Early life:...

 of The Fall also found Machen an inspiration. Likewise, Current 93
Current 93
Current 93 is an eclectic British experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet .-Background:Tibet has been the only constant in the group, though Steven Stapleton has appeared on...

 have drawn on the mystical and occult leanings of Machen, with songs such as "The Inmost Light", which shares its title with Machen's story. Some artists on the Ghost Box Music
Ghost Box Music
Ghost Box Music is an English independent record label, established in 2004 by Julian House and Jim Jupp.-Concept:The concept for the label was hatched by House and Jupp Ghost Box Music is an English independent record label, established in 2004 by Julian House and Jim Jupp.-Concept:The concept for...

 label like Belbury Poly
Belbury Poly
Belbury Poly is an alias of electronic musician Jim Jupp . Jupp's releases are on the Ghost Box Music label .-Belbury Poly's sound:...

 and The Focus Group
The Focus Group
The Focus Group is a project of experimental electronic musician and graphic designer Julian House. His releases are on his own label, Ghost Box Music...

 draw heavily on Machen. It is an interest also shared by film directors like Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...

 and Richard Stanley. Other notable figures with an enthusiasm for Machen have included Brocard Sewell
Brocard Sewell
Michael Seymour Sewell , usually now known by his religious name Brocard Sewell, was a British Carmelite friar and literary figure....

, Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...

, Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director known for being one half of the 1990s comedy duo Lee and Herring, and for co-writing and directing the critically acclaimed and controversial stage show Jerry Springer - The Opera...

 and Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams
Rowan Douglas Williams FRSL, FBA, FLSW is an Anglican bishop, poet and theologian. He is the 104th and current Archbishop of Canterbury, Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury and Primate of All England, offices he has held since early 2003.Williams was previously Bishop of Monmouth and...

, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Literary societies

An Arthur Machen Society was established in 1948 in the United States and survived until the 1960s. It was followed by the Arthur Machen Society based in the UK, in 1986, which in turn was replaced by the current literary society, The Friends of Arthur Machen.

The Friends of Arthur Machen (FoAM) is a non-profit international literary society
Literary society
A literary society is a group of people interested in literature. In the modern sense, this refers to a society that wants to promote one genre of literature or a specific writer. Modern literary societies typically promote research about their chosen author or genre, publish newsletters, and hold...

 founded in 1998 dedicated to supporting interest in Arthur Machen and his work, and to aid research. It publishes two journals: Faunus, which reprints rare Machen articles and criticism of his work, and Machenalia. It fosters interest not only in Machen but in events in which he played a key part, such as the Angels of Mons
Angels of Mons
The Angels of Mons is a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I...

 affair, and organises psychogeographic
Psychogeography
Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Another definition is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for...

 excursions.

Prominent members include Mark Samuels, Roger Dobson, Javier Marías
Javier Marías
Javier Marías is a Spanish novelist. He is also a translator and columnist.-Life:Javier Marías was born in Madrid. His father was the philosopher Julián Marías, who was briefly imprisoned and then banned from teaching for opposing Franco...

, Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director known for being one half of the 1990s comedy duo Lee and Herring, and for co-writing and directing the critically acclaimed and controversial stage show Jerry Springer - The Opera...

 and R.B. Russell
R.B. Russell
R.B. Russell is an English publisher, editor, author and illustrator.Russell runs the award-winning Tartarus Press with Rosalie Parker. Tartarus publish the Guide to First Edition Prices, edited by Russell, and which is now in its eighth edition. As an author he has recently had two collections of...

 of Tartarus Press
Tartarus Press
Tartarus Press is a small, international award-winning, independent small press run by R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker. It has two distinct specialities....

. The society was nominated for a World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional
World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional
This World Fantasy Award is presented to individuals for outstanding non-professional work in the fantasy field, and voted by a panel of judges at the World Fantasy Convention.-2004:...

 in 2006.

Selected works

In approximate order of composition, with date of publication:
  • "The Great God Pan
    The Great God Pan
    "The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication in 1894...

    " (written 1890–1894; published 1894) — Novella. First published together with "The Inmost Light" as Volume V in John Lane's Keynotes Series.
  • "The Inmost Light" (1894) — A scientist imprisons his wife's soul in a shining jewel, letting something else into her untenanted body, but the jewel is stolen before he can reverse this...
  • "The Shining Pyramid" (1895) — 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
    The Three Impostors
    The Three Impostors is an episodic novel by British horror fiction writer Arthur Machen, first published in 1895 in The Bodley Head's Keynote Series...

    (1895) — A novel incorporating several short stories, including "The Novel of the White Powder" and "The Novel of the Black Seal". 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 behavior 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) — A story featuring the main characters from The Three Impostors. It focuses on a murder performed with an ancient stone axe.
  • The Hill of Dreams
    The Hill of Dreams
    -Plot summary:The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain...

    (written 1895–1897; published 1907) — Novel.
  • Ornaments in Jade (written 1897; published 1924) — Vignettes.
  • "The White People
    The White People
    "The White People" is a fantasy-horror short story by the Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Written in the late 1890s, it was first published in Horlick's Magazine—of which Machen's friend A. E...

    " (written 1899; published 1904) — A young girl's diary, recounting tales told her by her nurse, and her increasingly deep delvings into magic. Often described as one of the greatest of all horror short stories. Very subtle in its telling.
  • Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature (written 1899; published 1902)
  • The House of the Hidden Light (Written in 1904 with Arthur Edward Waite. Only 3 copies were published. Reprinted in an edition of 350 copies by Tartarus Press
    Tartarus Press
    Tartarus Press is a small, international award-winning, independent small press run by R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker. It has two distinct specialities....

    , 2003)
  • The Secret Glory (written 1899–1908; published 1922) — 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
    Battle of Agincourt
    The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 , near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France...

    , led by Saint George
    Saint George
    Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...

    , come to the aid of British troops. This is cited (by some at least) as the origin of the Angels of Mons
    Angels of Mons
    The Angels of Mons is a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I...

     legend.
  • The Great Return (1915) — The Holy Grail
    Holy Grail
    The Holy Grail is a sacred object figuring in literature and certain Christian traditions, most often identified with the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers...

     returns to a Welsh village.
  • The Terror (1917) — In wartime Britain, a series of unexplained 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.
  • The London Adventure (1924) — Third and final volume of autobiography.
  • The Canning Wonder (1925) — Non-fiction study of the eighteenth-century mystery of the disappearance of Elizabeth Canning
    Elizabeth Canning
    Elizabeth Canning was an English maidservant who claimed to have been kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft for almost a month...

    . Machen concludes that Canning was lying about some or all of her exploits.
  • Dreads and Drolls (1926) — Essays.
  • The Green Round
    The Green Round
    The Green Round is a horror novel by author Arthur Machen. It was originally published by Ernest Benn in 1933. The first U.S. edition was published by Arkham House in 1968 in an edition of 2,058 copies. It was Machen's first and only book published by Arkham House....

    (1933) — Novel.
  • The Children of the Pool (1936) — Short stories.
  • The Secret of the Sangraal and Other Writings (Tartarus Press
    Tartarus Press
    Tartarus Press is a small, international award-winning, independent small press run by R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker. It has two distinct specialities....

    , 1995) — Essays collected from Dog and Duck (1924), Notes and Queries (1926), Tom O'Bedlam and His Song (1930), Bridles and Spurs (1951) and other sources.

External links

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