More than “The Great God Pan,” more than “The White People,” more than anything written in “The Three Imposters,” Machen is best known for a three-page piece of wartime propaganda that perfectly resonated with the British public in a way that would amuse and plague him. World War One was in its first year when Machen penned “The Bowmen” and had it published in “The Evening News” on September 29. It was, he claimed, inspired by a handful of rumors trickling in from the front l

Another frequently anthologized excerpt from The Three Imposters, “The Novel of the Black Seal” leant its pacing and style to M. R. James as well as H. P. Lovecraft. For James’ part, it has an uncanny resemblance to some of his most respected ghost stories (specifically “Count Magnus,” “A Warning to the Curious,” “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” “Oh, Whistle…,” and “A View from a Hill”), virtually inventing the trope of the loner academic whose discovery of a mysterious artifa

Written one year after “The Turn of the Screw,” the story which many consider Machen’s masterpiece shared several elements with Henry James’ chef d’oeuvre: both concern found manuscripts retelling the exploits of an unreliable female narrator who is now dead; both are spurred forward by the idea of a child’s sexual violation and the imperilment of a young girl monitored by an exploitive servant; both explore a naïve female’s erotic awakening; both are fascinated by the motif

When Arthur Machen published his first serious attempt at a supernatural tale in 1890, it would set the tone for his horror fiction for the rest of his life. Nearly all the themes, motifs, and philosophy that would make Machen an icon of fin-de-siècle horror can be found in “The Great God Pan” – the story that he is most famous for, but one to which critics continue to have mixed reactions. “Pan” was a study in Machen’s favorite horror narrative: the story of two worlds touch

With only a few exceptions, Arthur Machen rarely reveled in gore, Gothic clichés, or moments of horror. He hosts no chattering skeletons, moldering corpses, or headless ghosts. Nor does he often turn to the more sophisticated horrors of Lovecraft, Hodgson, or Chambers whose shambling mutants, reeking zombies, and tentacled monstrosities shifted the direction of horror in the twentieth century. On two occasions – both in “The Three Imposters” – he indulged in the Gothic excess

There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.— Arthur Machen With only a few exceptions, Arthur Machen rarely reveled in gore, Gothic clichés, or moments of horror. He hosts no chattering skeletons, moldering corpses,