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Arthur Machen

The Great God Pan and other stories

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The Great God Pan, The Shining Pyramid and The White People

"the most acutely and intentionally disagreeable book yet seen in English" - Westminster Gazette, 1894

“one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language” - Stephen King, 2008

Wales' greatest master of the macabre and mystical, Arthur Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Caerleon, and grew up to become one of the most influential and original writers of his generation.

Arthur Machen's most famous story was condemned on its first publication in 1894 as decadent and nightmarish. But its mixture of chilling horror and pagan sexuality with contemporary Victorian London, plus his distinctive and haunting writing style, soon brought him cult status.

About the author:

Machen spent a solitary childhood in the Monmouthshire countryside, exploring the Black Mountains, the ancient forest of Wentwood and the Severn Valley. He drew on his childhood among these dark landscapes and long-buried pagan remains, interweaving it with his adult life in bohemian fin-de-siécle London, to create magical and often deeply disturbing tales.

After WWI, he became a star on both sides of the Atlantic, and attracted admirers including H. P. Lovecraft, who described him as one of the four ‘modern masters of the horror story’. His fans today include Stephen King, Clive Barker, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, who have all emphasised their debt to Machen as ‘the forgotten father of weird fiction’ (The Guardian)

 

‘One of the best horror writers ever… Have you read The Great God Pan? Terrifying.’ - Mark E. Smith

For ability to create an atmosphere of nameless terror I can think of no author living or dead who comes near to him.’ - Jerome K. Jerome