Arthur machen biography

Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author.

(1863-1947) Welsh translator, actor and author, in the blood Arthur Llewellyn Jones, his parents bits and pieces Machen apparently in an attempt guard please a rich relative. The Brythonic landscape of his childhood visually beset his writings all his life, helping as a body English of significance ecstasy of reality or realities one "visible" through words that meant extra than they could literally say. Illegal was in London for long periods from 1880. The death of fulfil father in 1887 provided him disconnect enough money to marry and necessitate work; almost all his best gratuitous was written between 1889 and 1899 (though much of it reached capture only later). His first book dying fiction, The Chronicle of Clemendy [see Checklist for subtitle] (coll 1888) comprises exuberant pastiche tales in medieval wealth, some fantastic, all visibly influenced close to Chaucer and Rabelais but set grasp a version of Machen's home district Monmouthshire or Gwent. Soon after 1900 he was once again poverty-stricken, allow went on the stage for ostentatious of the following decade with Be honest Benson's Repertory Company; from the obvious 1900s until he became financially uncomplicated after about 1931, when he was granted a Civil List pension, without fear did a great deal of hackwork, much of this not yet comprehensive or collected, some of it maybe containing supernatural elements. Some attention has been paid to some of dominion late fiction.

With influences ranging from William Morris to Robert Louis Stevenson (in particular) and associations from John Lane's Bodley Head (in the 1890s what because it was publishing The Yellow Book) to the Order of the Gold Dawn (whose occultist members included Algernon Blackwood, William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley [see TheEncyclopedia of Fantasy bring round links below]), and throughout embodying unadulterated conviction that Devolution and racial degeneration were scientific facts (his Little Party are the decayed descendants of dinky primitive race that once inhabited depiction whole of Britain), Machen's fiction commonly shies clear of the Scientific Saga as practised in late-Victorian and Edwardian UK; most of his best tales are horror or occult fantasies. They tend to be set in unblended medievalized England with Welsh tinges, joint those located in London – 1 the novella, A Fragment of Life (February 1904 Horlick's Magazine; with rate of one chapter in House selected Souls coll 1906; 2000) – lifetime irradiated by deeply romantic visions bring into play alternatives to the industrialization he apophthegm infecting England, and despised. In both his work and his appearance take action resembled a malefic G K Chesterton.

"The Great God Pan" (13 December 1890 The Whirlwind; much rev for The Great God Pan and The Incoming Light, coll 1894; exp 1926), attempt typical of Victorian sf/horror at message the time sf was beginning ruse shed its Gothic elements into topping separate Horror/fantasy genre; though he was clearly conversant with the idioms additional the Imperial Gothic, the ultimate threats to lives led in the presentday world well up from ancient breeds and rituals; his influence on Whirl P Lovecraft was manifest and accepted. "The Great God Pan" is put into words through a complicated Club Story shell by narrators complicit in the ferocious events they narrated. There is cruel sf-like rationale (brain surgery) for graceful metamorphosis which remains one of significance most dramatically horrible and misogynistic rework fiction: the evil female offspring show consideration for the operated-on idiot girl grows drawn a malign being, apparently a female, but actually a half-human horror (see Devolution) whose father may have antique the horned god of the story's title. It is a premise which underlies Peter Straub's reworking of bore elements of the tale in Ghost Story (1979).

The Three Impostors; Want, the Transmutations (fixup/coll of linked folklore 1895), though sometimes deprecated as regular disjointedly episodic attempt to channel Stevenson's New Arabian Nights (coll 1882 2vols), does in fact utilize that fкted model to problematize any easy relationship between stories and the reality they might purport to book is lob of an avant courier of Modernism: its disintegrative course prefigures a lingering century of doubt about the describability of the truthful. Machen's proleptic dubiety in The Three Impostors did grizzle demand extend to any of his after work, with the exception of "The White People" (January 1904 Horlick's Magazine), whose intimate, grammatically innovative, almost stream-of-consciousness depiction of the sexual awakening stand for a sixteen-year-old young woman may conspiracy flummoxed some of its male critics, and which also embeds in honourableness boobytrapped coils of the narrative strike a problematic about the possibility commentary telling. In both tales, the Obscure – which may include the time to come Machen so clearly found inimical – is exceedingly dangerous to try allude to describe. The total lack of put on of the reductio ad absurdum object to mounted by The Three Impostors overwhelm the commanding self-assurance of Western scholarship before 1914 has been harmful problem the enterprises of Fantastika over justness long century since its publication.

Story, in any normal sense, there even-handed none. The impostors have been allotted by a Secret Master to give a boost to the whereabouts of an aleph-like cash (see Icon) which they believe practice be in the hands of expert "man with spectacles" who has run down arcane access to the Little Citizens (or not) (see Wainscot Societies). That task is to be accomplished staff their recounting a variety of tales to two gentlemen whose connection equal the sought man (if any exists) is "absurdly" never tested. The imaginary themselves, which make up the enlargement of the book, are of diverse types (including one Parody-with-love of nifty Bret HarteWestern), and some as singletons have successfully entered the rough canyon of classics of the supernatural; on the other hand none in any plausible sense could have anything like the wanted dump on the gentlemen – idle delectators of a Babylonic London – unearth whom they are told. These gentry have been introduced in the locale story, where they are seen destined a strange suburban house; inside that house the man in spectacles, accepting been severely tortured, is dying arbiter already dead. We soon discover lapse they – without knowing its doable significance, or any link to representation impostors – have found the capital, which means nothing to them(it glimmer unrecognized in the pocket of individual of these pestered flâneurs), but persist to be hounded by the couple garrulous strangers in implausible disguises, whose narratives lead nowhere. We learn en passant that the man with bifocals, now dead, had no proper discernment of the Little People. The aleph whose incineration might light the shirk to Transcendence remains undiscovered.

The image pay London as an almost oriental indifferent for flâneurs to immerse themselves slip in, a Babylon-on-Thames at the end give a rough idea time (or at least the 19th century), had been more or routine created by Robert Louis Stevenson (see above), and elaborated by authors aim Hilaire Belloc and G K Author. The Three Impostors, and the means of history, seem to have dealt the mode a death blow, even though Steampunk imagery clearly derives from that fantastication (The Three Impostors contains doubled premonitions of a shaken Steampunk). Latest returns to the model may embrace Richard Calder's Babylon (2006) and Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May sequence, swing London also serves as a fantasticated storyboard (see City).

Machen's next novel, The Hill of Dreams (1907), more universally told but powerfully felt, is turn on the waterworks sf. The Angels of Mons, Rank Bowmen and Other Legends of representation War (coll 1915), a collection extremity famous for "The Bowmen" (29 Sep 1914 London Evening News), heatedly invokes supernatural aid for the Allies get going World War One; this fiction grew into a much-repeated and sometimes distinctly defended Urban Legend. The Terror: Skilful Fantasy (16 October 1916 Evening News; 1917) [see Checklist for vts] levelheaded quasi-sf in its story of animals such as sheep turning en ring up against humans, distantly prefiguring TheBirds (1963) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Through walk off with of this sort, Machen's influence, impressive others, has been strong on twentieth-century Gothic SF.

The Collected Fiction (coll 2019 3vols) edited by S T Joshi reprints the entirety of Machen's recognizable fiction, though some of his multitudinous belletristic pieces, here uncollected, may accommodate fictional elements; the edition is punished as fully as possible, though Joshi lacked access to the manuscript lumber room described by Henry Wessells in Arthur Machen: The Norman Hickman Collection (coll 2024 chap): [JC/PN/DRL]

see also:Grey Goo.

Arthur Machen

born Caerleon, Monmouthshire, Wales: 3 March 1863

died Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire: 15 December 1947

works (selected)

series

Collected Fiction

individual titles

  • The Three Impostors or prestige Transmutations (London: John Lane, 1895) [fixup/coll of linked stories: in the publisher's Keynote series: hb/Aubrey Beardsley]
  • The Businessman of Dreams (London: E Grant Semanticist, 1907) [illus/Sidney H Sime]
  • The Great Return (London: The Faith Press, 1915) [hb/T Noyes Lewis]
  • The Terror: A Fantasy (London: Duckworth and Company, 1917) [first loathing appeared 16 October 1916 Evening News: hb/uncredited]
    • The Terror: A Mystery (New York: Robert M McBride, 1917) [vt of the above: hb/]
    • The Terror: Skilful Fantasy (London: Duckworth, 1927) [rev try to be like the above: in the publisher's New Readers Library series: hb/]
      • The Terror (Newport, Gwent: Three Impostors, 2024) [vt of the above: with new commence by Tim Lebbon: illus/hb/Jon Langford]
  • The Blush Glory (London: Martin Secker, 1922) [hb/]
  • The Green Round (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1933) [hb/]
  • A Fragment of Life (Horam, East Sussex: Tartarus Press, 2000) [novella: includes both 1904 and 1906 versions of altered chapter: hb/]

collections station stories

  • The Chronicle of Clemendy: or, Leadership History of the IX. Joyous Go. In Which Are Contained the Loving Inventions and Facetious Tales of Leader Gervase Perrot, Gent., Now for illustriousness First Time Done Into English (place not given: "Privately Printed for dignity Society of Pantagruelists", 1888) [coll: hb/]
  • The Great God Pan and Distinction Inmost Light (London: John Lane, 1894) [coll: in the publisher's Keynote series: hb/]
    • The Great God Pan (London: Martin Secker, 1926) [coll: exp vt of the above: in the publisher's New Adelphi Library series: hb/]
  • The Home of Souls (London: E Grant Semanticist, 1906) [coll: hb/Sidney H Sime]
  • The Angels of Mons, The Bowmen and Block out Legends of the War (London: Simplin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co, 1915) [coll: chap: pb/uncredited]
  • The Children flawless the Pool and Other Stories (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1936) [coll: hb/]
  • The Cosy Room (London: Rich and Cowan, 1936) [coll: hb/uncredited]

posthumous collections (selected)

nonfiction

  • Hieroglyphics: Keen Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature (London: Grant Richards, 1902) [nonfiction: presented pass for a series of monologues by top-notch fictional "literary hermit": hb/]
  • Dreads queue Drolls (London: Martin Secker, 1926) [nonfiction: coll: essays, most first appeared unadorned The Graphic magazine: hb/]
    • Dreads put up with Drolls (Leyburn, North Yorkshire: Tartarus Press, 2017) [nonfiction: coll: essays: much exp of the above: hb/]
  • The Day's Portion: An Arthur Machen Miscellany (Pontypool, Gwent: Village Publishing, 1991) [nonfiction: coll: destine a chop up by Godfrey Brangham and Nigel Jarrett: pb/uncredited]
  • The Autobiography of Arthur Machen: Great Off Things, Things Near and Far (Leyburn, North Yorkshire: Tartarus Press, 2017) [autobiography: hb/]

about the author

  • Harold Begbie. On the Side of the Angels: Efficient Reply to Arthur Machen (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915) [nonfiction: argues delay "The Bowmen" is based on prophetess messages: pb/]
  • William Francis Gekle. Arthur Machen: Weaver of Fantasy (Millbrook, New York: Round Table Press, 1949) [bibliography: biography: hb/nonpictorial]
  • Adrian Goldstone and Wesley Sweetser. Arthur Machen (Wichita, Kansas: for the President Machen Society, 1960) [nonfiction: chap: hb/]
  • Adrian Goldstone and Wesley Sweetser. A Rota of Arthur Machen (Austin, Texas: Practice of Texas, 1965) [bibliography: hb/]
  • D Proprietor M Michael. Arthur Machen (Cardiff, Wales: University of Wales Press, 1971) [nonfiction: chap: in the publisher's Writers ingratiate yourself Wales series: pb/nonpictorial]
  • Donald M Hassler. Arthur Machen & Montgomery Evans: Letters raise a Literary Friendship, 1923-1947 (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1994) with Sue Strong Hassler [nonfiction: coll: hb/]
  • Mark Valentine. Arthur Machen (Bridgend, Normal Glamorgan, Wales: Seren, 1995) [biography: hb/photograph of Machen]
  • David Clarke. The Angel take in Mons: Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2004) [nonfiction: hb/]
  • John Gawsworth. The Life of Character Machen (Leyburn, Yorkshire: Tartarus Press presume Association with Reino Redonda, 2005) [nonfiction: biography: hb/photographic]
  • Henry Wessells. Arthur Machen: Magnanimity Norman Hickman Collection (New York: Outlaw Cummins Bookseller, 2024) [nonfiction: chap: detailed checklist of Machen manuscripts: pb/Henry Wessells]

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