Arthur Machen’s Followers (983)

Arthur Machen

Born

in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, Wales

March 03, 1863

Died

December 15, 1947

Genre

Fantasy, Horror, Weird Fiction

Influences

Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Francois Rab ...more

edit data

Arthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His long story The Great God Pan made him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreams is generally considered his masterpiece. He also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.

At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, 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 Eleus Arthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His long story The Great God Pan made him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreams is generally considered his masterpiece. He also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.

At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, 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. 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 of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.

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 subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.

Machen next produced The Three Impostors, 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 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, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
...more

Combine Editions
Arthur Machen’s books

Average rating: 3.82 · 47,839 ratings · 5,064 reviews · 1,055 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Great God Pan 3.68 avg rating — 15,916 ratings — published 1890 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen, Guillermo del Toro (Foreword), S.T. Joshi (Editor) 3.87 avg rating — 4,466 ratings — published 1904 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Three Impostors and Other Stories (The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen #1) by Arthur Machen, S.T. Joshi (Introduction) 4.07 avg rating — 1,457 ratings — published 2001 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Three Impostors 3.85 avg rating — 1,402 ratings — published 1895 — 208 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Hill of Dreams 3.85 avg rating — 1,327 ratings — published 1907 — 534 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories by Arthur Machen, Aaron Worth (Editor) 3.86 avg rating — 1,010 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Terror 3.66 avg rating — 954 ratings — published 1917 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Shining Pyramid 3.58 avg rating — 586 ratings — published 1895 — 83 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The House of Souls 3.86 avg rating — 543 ratings — published 1906 — 190 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Great God Pan: collection of tales 3.34 avg rating — 455 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Arthur Machen…

Series by Arthur Machen

The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (3 books)
by

Arthur Machen,

S.T. Joshi (Editor)

3.92 avg rating — 6,037 ratings

Collected Fiction (3 books)
by

Arthur Machen,

S.T. Joshi (Editor)

4.32 avg rating — 31 ratings

Related News

Readers’ Most Anticipated Books of 2025

A nice thing about the end of one year is that it’s traditionally followed by another year, which means 12 more months of new books to...

Polls

April 2017 Short Story Poll

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, 128 pages, 1911

54 votes, 18.7%

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, 122 pages, 1879

51 votes, 17.6%

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, 33 pages, 1849

37 votes, 12.8%

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, 110 pages, 1984

30 votes, 10.4%

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde, 125 pages, 1891

22 votes, 7.6%

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, 108 pages, 1872

22 votes, 7.6%

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, 64 pages, 1853

20 votes, 6.9%

2BRO2B by Kurt Vonnegut,30 pages, 1962

14 votes, 4.8%

A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor, 24 pages, 1955

13 votes, 4.5%

A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger, 18 pages, 1948

12 votes, 4.2%

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, 69 pages, 1989

10 votes, 3.5%

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen, 94 pages, 1894

4 votes, 1.4%

289 total votes

15 comments

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Fantasy Book Club: Nominations now open for March book	97	353	Jan 17, 2012 08:12AM
You'll love this ...: Debra T's Rainbow's Pot of Gold	409	93	Jan 04, 2013 02:26AM
The Seasonal Read...: Winter Challenge 2012-2013: Completed Tasks - DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS TOPIC	2485	861	Feb 28, 2013 09:01PM
The Patrick Hamil...: Arthur Machen	2	12	Aug 29, 2013 07:34AM
Reading with Style: Summer 2013 RwS Completed Tasks - Summer 2013	648	128	Aug 31, 2013 09:06PM

More…