Arthur Machen  

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Arthur Machen (3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) was 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.

Views

Spiritual

From the beginning of his literary career, Machen espoused a mystical 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 manifested 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 and other medieval romances, François Rabelais, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Thomas de Quincey, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Those writers who failed to achieve this, or far worse did not even attempt it, received short shrift from Machen.Template:Citation needed

Machen's strong opposition to a materialistic viewpoint is obvious in many of his works, marking him as part of neo-romanticism. He was deeply suspicious of science, materialism, commerce, and Puritanism, all of which were anathema to Machen's conservative, bohemian, 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 clergyman, always held Christian beliefs, though accompanied by a fascination with sensual mysticism; his interests in paganism and the occult were especially prominent in his earliest works. Machen was well read on such matters as alchemy, the kabbalah, and Hermeticism, and these occult interests formed part of his close friendship with A. E. Waite. Machen, however, was always very down-to-earth, requiring substantial proof that a supernatural 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 and his admiration for the medieval world and its Roman Catholic ritualism did not fully tempt him away from Anglicanism—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 Anglican who was able to incorporate elements from his own mystical experiences, Celtic Christianity, and readings in literature and legend into his thinking.

Political

In politics, Machen was reactionary. He stated in response to a 1937 questionnaire on the Spanish Civil War in the Left Review, "Mr. Arthur Machen presents his compliments and begs to inform that he is, and always has been, entirely for General Franco."

Selected works (in approximate order of composition, with date of publication)

• "The Great God Pan" (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 (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 (written 1895–1897; published 1907) — Novel.
• Ornaments in Jade (written 1897; published 1924) — Vignettes.
• "The White People" (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.)
• 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, led by Saint George, come to the aid of British troops. This is cited (by some at least) as the origin of the Angels of Mons legend.
• The Great Return (1915) — The Holy Grail 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. Machen concludes that Canning was lying about some or all of her exploits.
• Dreads and Drolls (1926) — Essays.
• The Green Round (1933) — Novel.
• The Children of the Pool (1936) — Short stories.
• The Secret of the Sangraal and Other Writings (Tartarus Press, 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.