Book Description
Some of the finest horror stories ever written. Arthur Machen had a profound impact upon H.P. Lovecraft and the group of stories that would later become known as the Cthulhu Mythos. This first volume of Chaosium's Arthur Machen collection begins with the chilling "The Three Impostors" in its complete form, including the rarely seen sections "The Decorative Imagination" and "The Novel of the Iron Maid." Rounding out the first volume are "The Great God Pan," "The Inmost Light," and "The Shining Pyramid," all are excellent tales. Introduction by S.T. Joshi.

This book is part of an expanding collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction and related topics. Call of Cthulhu fiction focuses on single entities, concepts, or authors significant toreaders and fans of H.P. Lovecraft. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Short and sweet!!
Is it "imposter" or "impostor"--that's the question that nagged me while I read The Three Imposters.Which spelling is correct, and which is the imposter/or?The lexicographers need to come down hard on this issue!

That aside, The Three Imposters is a black diamond of a little dark fantasy, told in hypnotic descriptive prose.The book is structured as a series of stories within a frame story, much like the Decameron or Canterbury Tales, only the frame story has its own plot and is the most interesting of all in The Three Imposters.The sub-stories range from the strange to the macabre, to the frankly paranormal, each entertaining in its own right, besides what it contributes to the whole.Moreover, Machen's style glitters with curious flights of thought and characterizations, wellnigh as entertaining as the story itself.

What struck me most of all about The Three Imposters is how panoramically influencial this short book is, as if it were the whole nine muses of twentieth century literature!The Maltese Falcon owes an obvious debt to the Gold Tiberius.I think that the Novel of the Dark Valley is a clear precursor to the Trial, and obviously, Lovecraft derived his entire schtick from the Adventure of the Lost Brother.Machen himself must have been influenced by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, published about 10 years earlier, but Machen amplifies the original, rather than narrowing it.

Altogether, The Three Imposters is well worth the 150 pages or so of reading time.Dyson and Phillipps are my new literary heroes!I would recommend this Chaosium edition, which includes these several other quality Machen works and sells for nearly the same price as other editions.

A great addition to any weird library, from this Welsh seer of the hidden
First of all, a warning; do NOT read the introduction to Machen by S. T. Joshi strangely placed in the front of the book before you read the stories. The otherwise excellent introduction contains spoilers to all the stories, something I thankfully noticed at an early time. Being part of my effort to "branch out" beyond H. P. Lovecraft, I purchased all the three books by Arthur Machen that has been published by Chaosium. The tales within turned out to be excellent, and I quickly saw why HPL praised Machen so highly. Even though parts of the tales no longer appear as "shocking" as they once did, with their horror being centred on "sex and pagans", they still have a mild discomfort to offer, and the final tale of the book is, as we shall see, quite the masterpiece.

The first tale is "The Great God Pan", a very good tale, but as I've said; time has not been kind to this. A naked God in the forest don't exactly scare or shock people these days, at least not in the way that Machen intended. Although, it should be noted that I'm not the type of "conventional Christian" that Machen had in mind as his audience when he wrote it. The tale details an experiment gone "wrong", where a young girl sees and interacts with the ancient heathen god Pan. The result pops out nine months later, and several horrific incidents spawn from this. A fine tale, but a bit dated.

The second tale is much more to my taste, "The Inmost Light" (and for fans of the marvellous English musical group Current 93, I assume this is where Tibet got his title), also a taste centred around an experiment, where an occultist attempt to capture the essence of the body, "The Inmost Light", in a gem. A wonderful tale with an eerie feeling throughout.

The third tale is "The Shining Pyramid", a tale about the well-known "Little people", and one of the two best tales in the book. It unfolds somewhat like a detective novel, where two men find strange clues to uncanny activities in connection to the disappearance of a young woman in the Welsh countryside. The protagonists suspect the hands of the pre-Aryan inhabitants of Europe, and the tale is an effective weird tale, with Machen's wonderful prose really showing its best side.

The final tale, or I should say "tales", is the title story, "The Three Impostors", which is a strange creation of interlocking tales many in number. The tale is about a young man in London, a wannabe writer, who through random encounters with a few people hears several tales that all contain a few common elements; "a young man with large spectacles" and some weird and horrific incidents involving this young man. But alas all is not as it appears to be, and we are brought to several places in the search for this man, and what it all means is not revealed before the final phrases, where the real evil is revealed. This tale is among the best work I've read in the genre, and it really gives you the creeps at various parts, some of it being simply excellent.

Highly recommended!

More chilling than gore
This review is only about the title story, or rather, short novel. It is a circular story, as it ends where it begins. Characters have multiple identities and strange coincidences abound. It is a macabre joke, a foundational book of the cosmic horror a la Lovecraft and his Ctulhu mysteries. It is also a peak of the late Victorian era and much more. What makes it more than a genre story is the poetic quality of its literature. There are paragraphs that would make little perfect prose poems.

Along several months, or years, Dyson and Phillips meet different persons, who have in common the search for a shy and nervous young man with a little black moustache and big spectacles. Each one of these persons tells his or her story in inserted chilling tales, full of the imagery that would later become cliche. This is no cheap horror: it has a great sense of humor, it is not about axe-grinding nor about phantoms and exorcisms. It is pure cosmic horror, the horror of hidden forces and obscure memories of a remote past. It is a horror of strange gatherings and incognoscible conspiracies. The inserted stories are often compiled independently of their contextual frame: "The novel of the Dark Valley" is an adventure in the loneliness of the Rocky Mountains, with a pre-Kafkian touch that makes you go pale. "The novel of the Black Seal" happens in the Welsh wilderness, with a mad scientist and beings from the past. "The novel of the Iron Maiden" includes a collectionist of instruments of torture. "The novel of the White Powder" is about a substance that transforms humans into something indefinible and horrific. Finally, ""The story of the Spectacled Young Man" closes the circle and "explains" everything.

Like a good Englishman, Machen is a master of the understatement. More than showing, he insinuates to let the readers feel for themselves all the weight of the horror of the world, the mysteries that haunt us, and the strangeness of this life. Little surprise, then, that this was one of Jorge Luis Borges's favorite books, since much of his beloved subjects are here: ancient and undecipherable languages; stories lost in time; mirror games; equivocal identities; implacable gods; and somber mansions. Much recommended.

A Bit Dry But Worthwhile
Other reviews are longer and more in-depth.This is meant as a quickie.

The title story is the heavy-hitter of this collection; it ties several shorter stories together under one title.The other stories are much shorter but have their twists and turns as well.

The language is not as dry as one might expect from stories written a century ago.

Worth four stars out of five.

Convinced to buy Vol. 2
As the title says, I found this collection so intriguing that I will be buying the next volume (The White People and other Tales).The only work that I had previously known by Arthur Machen was "The Great God Pan", which has shown up in so many anthologies that I am thoroughly sick of it, although it is a good read the first few times through."The Inmost Light" was quite disturbing to me in terms of plumbing the depravity of the human soul. "The Shining Pyramid" was a good supernatural detective story, in my opinion, although the intuitive leaps made by the protagonist would have made Fox Mulder proud.This clearly inspired quite a few of Robert Howard's stories.

Clearly, the crown jewel of this collection is "The Three Imposters."The deeper I got into this novel, the more engrossed I became.It is made up of 14 short stories, each of which is part of an overarching storyline that involves the protagonist, a golden coin, a man with spectacles, and 3 people who are not who they say they are.Each successive short story drew me in further.Some of the best reading I have done in years! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A mixed bag of Welsh weird tales
This is the third and final book in the Chaosium trilogy consisting of material from the early 1900's Welsh author, Arthur Machen. H. P. Lovecraft was a huge fan of a lot of his work, and this is a book put together in large part by S. T. Joshi, author of the prizewinning Lovecraft-biography. Whereas the two previous books were mostly larger tales or a few big ones with an addition of miscellaneous material, this is mostly miscellaneous material. Even though Joshi in his introduction mentions several pieces of unenclosed material as read worthy, he has still added an unabridged edition of the tale "The Terror", hence the title. This seems like a very strange choice to me; why not just include the other material referred to, instead of adding the same tale that came in the previous book, if in a slightly different version? A strange choice. The tale is fine until the end, when the badly chosen ending comes, which really ruins an otherwise fine tale.

The other tales included that I enjoyed were for example "The Lost Club", about a secret club for the rich elite in London, where each time one of the members is chosen to disappear from this earth. Quite original and creepy. "Johnny Double", a fine and amusing tale about an evil doppelganger wrecking someone's life without his knowledge. Don't you suspect you may have had someone like that too, after a night on town? I sure have, since someone looking exactly like me occasionally in my youth was rumoured to be quite the idiot after a G&T too many, but it couldn't have been me, so... ;-)

There's "Change", a great tale about the ancient European phenomenon of the "Changeling", something I in all honesty tend to not disregard at all in real life, but which would explain a thing or two sometimes. Another tale that I loved is "Out of the Picture", a tale very much in relation to Lovecraft's famous "Pickman's Model". Wonderful!

Apart from this the rest of the tales are a very varying mix of tales, some simply bad, some mediocre and some very much read worthy without having that tiny extra. I still highly recommend this book, since the good ones are tales you simply have to read if you like the genre.

Third in Chaosium's series on Arthur Machen
When I first read THE TERROR & OTHER TALES, I was under the impression from ST Joshi's introduction that he thought Arthur Machen's remaining works (the ones printed in this volume) were of poor quality.I spent the rest of the book determined to prove him wrong.Although I like Joshi as an editor (much better than Robert Price and his higher-criticism hangups), I think that academics sometimes become too focused on purity of form and lose sight of otherwise good writing.I personally like all of Arthur Machen's writing, both the cosmic horror and the everyday gone wrong.I was pleased to see, however, than when I reread the introduction I found that Joshi now agreed with me :)

Chaosium has previously produced 2 novels of Arthur Machen's fiction: THE THREE IMPOSTERS AND OTHER STORIES (which primarily contains "The Great God Pan" and the title story "The Three Imposters", which is actually a series of short stories) and THE WHITE PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES (which contains "The White People" which heavily influenced HPL, "Ornaments in Jade", and "A Fragment of Life").THE TERROR is the third (and presumably last) of the Arthur Machen line; I would call it a grab bag of anything remaining of Machen's work that is fit to print.

Machen's story "The Terror" is the title piece for this collection, and oddly it was the story I liked the least.It's about the animal kingdom turning on humanity during WW I, but the government is doing a coverup.Frankly it is somewhat slow and dry, and Machen seemed to be making a point rather than telling a story.Interestingly, at the end of "The Terror", the investigators find a farmhouse where some people took refuge from the "Terror" and read their diary - I was struck by the similarity to zombie movies (!) of all things, and I now wonder if George Romero had this story in mind when scripting "Night of the Living Dead"?Stranger things have happened...

The rest of the collected stories seem to me to be quieter, more prosaic stories where something has gone weird and it may be beyond the power of anyone to fix.Sometimes Machen will insert himself into the story as an ordinary journalist, a man interested in the story but with little power to affect the outcome.In style and substance, the remainder reminds me of MR James, which is high praise indeed.

Some of the better stories here are "The Lost Club" (which is distinctly eerie in finding the secret group of wealthy and famous, where at each gathering one member disappears), "The Dover Road" (which is sort of a ghost story but involves something more like spiritualism), and "Change" (where the children encounter something like "the White People" of Machen's earlier work).Some, like "The Islington Mystery", "Out of the Picture", and "The Bright Boy" are about criminals and their misdeeds, but there is some supernatural element that twists the whole thing into some horrible aspect.I can defintiely see hints and phrases that HPL would pick up on and use in some of his work; also, the two were writing at the same time towards the end of Machen's life, so perhaps there was a common style of the times for them to use.

I can highly recommend this anthology as being worth collecting.

Superfluous
S.T. Joshi concludes in his introduction to Chaosium second volume of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen: "All that one need read of Arthur Machen in the weird vein are contained in these two Chaosium volumes of his tales..." As always Joshi is quite correct, so it begs the question why he found this third volume necessary at all. The stories included here are only a pale shadow of Machen at his best (e.g. The Three Impostors or the fabulous "A Fragment of Life"), and is only interesting for the sake of completeness. Greatly disappointing.

Machen, An Incomparable Mystic
Arthur Machen is, of course, one of the preminent weird fiction writers of the early 20th century. Working at the same time as the Decadents, but most decidedly not one of them, his works would influence such writers as Lovecraft and his circle, as well as modern masters like Peter Straub.

The Terror is Chaosium's third volume of Arthur Machen's work, and as can be expected the best stories can be found in the previous two volumes. Editor S.T. Joshi admits as much in his introduction, but The Terror is still a worthy read.

"The Terror" is the same story featured in The White People, however this is the compete version, and the additions are most welcome. Most of the other stories do not reach such heights of sustained suspense as this story, the largest of the collection. "The Lost Club" deals with two men stumbling on a gentlemen's club that may be far more ominous than they first believe. "Munitions of War" is tale of ghosts and war. "The Islington Mystery" asks if a man can be a murderer if there's no body. "Johnny Double" concerns a boy who cannot possibly be in two places at once... but is. "The Cosy Room" also deals with a murder, but is it his guilt or the chase that drives him over the edge? "Opening the Door" deals with a man who literally disappears through a mysterious door in his garden. "The Children of The Pool" deals with a malignant genius loci that gives literal birth to the monstrous beings lurking within unwary visitors. "The Bright Boy" is an implausible story concerning a little boy who is not what he seems. In "Out Of The Picture,"the subject of an artist's paintings menaces London. "Change" harkens back to Machen's early work concering the Little People; while on vacation in a sleepy Welsh town a family finds out just why the locals keep their lights on at night. "The Dover Road" deals with the mystery of a man who disappears within a haunted house... "Ritual," the final story, continues Machen's fascinations with children and pagan remnants of the dim past.

On the whole, these stories do not match Machen's earlier works... but at times the chills are just as sharp as they used to be... witness the first half of "The Dover Road," "Change" and "The Terror." If you like Arthur Machen's work you are well advised to read this book. If you're merely a fan of Lovecraft's predecessors or of Victorian/Edwardian fiction in general, try the previous Chaosium Machen collections first. ... Read more

Product Description
Born in Wales in 1863, Machen was a London journalist for much of his life.Among his fiction, he may be best known for the allusive, haunting title story of this book, &"The White People", which H.P. Lovecraft thought to be the second greatest horror story ever written (after Blackwood's "The Wilows"). This wide ranging collection also includes the crystalline novelette "A Fragment of Life", & "The Angel of Mons" (a story so widely reported that it was imagined true by millions in the grim initial days of the GreatWar), and "The Great Return" telling of the stately visions which graced the Welsh villageof Llantristant for a time. Four more tales and the poetical "Ornaments in Jade" are all finely told. This is the second Machen volume edited by S. T. Joshi and published by Chaosium. The first volume was The Three Impostors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Another excellent collection of weird stories from this Welsh master
This is the second book in the series of three from Chaosium where S. T. Joshi has edited a collection of what he finds to be Arthur Machen's best and most memorable weird tales. I was very much looking forward to reading this, since I for years had heard of Lovecraft's judging Machen's tale "The White People" to be the second best weird tale in existence (after Blackwood's "The Willows"). I was certainly not disappointed!

The introduction by Joshi is as always interesting and informative. The book starts out with another tale from his cycle about the "Little People"; "The Red Hand". A fine detective tale with a major twist, a splendid tale which is also quite creepy. Then comes the pleasant surprise of a cycle of prose-poems known as "Ornaments in Jade". These short "stories" were very much to my taste, and they all have a kind of dreamy and vaguely creepy character.

The title tale "The White People" appears, which is a bit of a strange tale. It's told like little scraps from a young girl's diary, and chronicles her initiatory upbringing by a peculiar nanny, and small experiences from her young life. Another very creepy tale. The prose is, as in everything I've read by Machen, exquisite, and he really had me believing it was a genuine diary. The pages fly by, and I heartily concur with Lovecraft's judgment that it is a marvellous tale, even though I'd say a lot of Lovecraft's own writing is just as fine.

The rest of the book consists of the fine but mundane tale about the famous "Bowmen", that millions believed was a genuine field report from WW1 about angels on the battlefield. Apart from this the rest of the tales are fine material, but all of the marred in some way by Machen's rather conventional Catholic Christianity, which to me personally really ruins the endings of quite a few of his tales.

That being said, this volume does contain some of the best weird tales I've ever read, and I heartily recommend it.

A Refreshing Change
I often find myself drawn to the explicit- gore and carnage, ala Bentley Little and Richard Laymon, so the sublety of Machen's writing was quite a departure for me. The style is quite beautiful- this is a talented writer whose prose will sweep you away with its pure visual beauty.

You will not grasp the entire sequence of events first in these tales, you may have to read them a second time, but that is a pleasure given the author's pleasing style. Perhaps it is time to take a break from the overt that is so prevalent in books and films today, and return to a kinder, gentler time where what is not said can be even more horrifying than what is thrown in your face. This is Machen.

Too Dry, Too Mundane
Other reviews are longer and more in-depth.This is meant as a quickie.

Too many of these stories are short (three pages) and rather limp.I prefer stories that are either longer (more development) or harder-hitting (with action/horror/experimental text/uniqueness/something!).

And unlike the first volume in this series, the language is dry.When combined with the more mundane subject matter, this book does not merit the four stars I gave "The Three Impostors".

Worth three stars out of five.

Volume 2 of Arthur Machen's work
I was vary impressed by Chaosium's first collection of Machen's work, which was THE THREE IMPOSTERS AND OTHER STORIES."The Three Imposters" was a narrative of interwoven tales describing a paranoid man's encounter with three people who are not who they seem.Each is an excellent story in its own right, but the whole is greater than the sum.Considering the success of the first volume, I decided to try the second.

If you don't know Arthur Machen, he wrote "weird" stories in the late Victorian - Edwardian period.They all have a distinctly British flavor that reminds me of M.R. James. Most of his stories are set in his homeland of Wales, where something of charm and magic remains beneath the hills.By necessity he began to write for a newspaper later in life, and a fictional account he wrote for the paper on spectral guardians for British troops in WWI became the "Angel of Mons" stories you can still read about today.

THE WHITE PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES is an eclectic collection of Machen's weird stories, his poetry, and some of his later writings for newspapers.Despite being a fan of Lovecraft, I have always wondered what HPL meant when he consistently referred to a protagonist hinting at things unknown (to others), dropping outlandish names and meaning more than is said.Well, he borrowed this technique from Machen's "The White People", a story made to look like a young girl's diary.Her journal is just a collection of thoughts and experiences, and many things are hinted at as reminders to herself which we will never understand, but these brief glimpses are horrible enough.Machen's poetry collection, "Ornaments in Jade", also struck me as weirdly beautiful but also indecipherable.More is unsaid than said, hinted at than revealed.I felt that it relied on some code, a common frame of reference, that has been lost over the course of a hundred years.Perhaps his contemporaries felt the same way.

There are other interesting compositions in this volume."The Red Hand" brings back the investigating protagonists from "The Three Imposters," with a not-too-dissimilar plotline. "A Fragment of Life" seemed to be a glimpse into the everday life from a time long ago.It is almost novel length and simply describes the common affairs of a couple in turn-of-the-century London.If this sounds uninteresting, you'll have to read for yourself how a masterful author makes common situations uncommon.Finally, there are a series of stories written from Machen's journalistic days.Besides a group that are all related to the "Angel of Mons" category, there are a few others that describe other supernatural phenomena and are written in the first-person.They are so straight-forward and sincere that sometimes it is difficult to remember they are meant to be fiction.

Machen's overarching theme is that the material, everday world is merely a shadow of reality and that true living must penetrate that shadow to see the glories beyond.This is something he truly believed and it is evident in all of his stories.The reason these stories continue to frighten and thrill is that we desire to see what is beyond the veil, but we are also afraid of what we will find.
... Read more

Book Description
Arthur Machen's classic tale, The Hill of Dreams. This is the book many consider the masterpiece of one of the most influential writers of fantasy and horror, a story echoed in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, and T. E. D. Klein, among many others. Copper Penny Press books are in an easy to read, sixteen-point format.Download Description
But already about he town the darkness was forming; fast, fast the shadows crept upon it from the forest, and from all sides banks and wreaths of curling mist were gathering, as if a ghostly leaguer were being built up against the city, and the strange race who lived in its streets. Suddenly there burst out fro the stillness the clear an piercing music of the réveillé, calling, recalling, iterated, reiterated, and ending with one long high fierce shrill note. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Arthur Machen's Hill of Dreams
Arthur Machen, one of the 20th Century's most talented writers of supernatural horror fiction, wrote Hill of Dreams, his autobiographic novel, in 1922.The novel concerns a gifted young writer, Lucien Taylor, whose calling to write great (not just good) works of literature dooms him to self-destruction.

The novel follows Lucien's life from boyhood until his mid-twenties.Lucien grows up in a rural village in Wales near the ruins of an ancient Roman fortress (Machen himself grew up in Caerleon, Wales near the ruins of the Roman citadel, Isca Silurum).While exploring these ruins, Lucien undergoes a mystical awakening and becomes fascinated with ancient Roman culture, paganism and the supernatural.His imagination is so captured, it is only a matter of time until he starts to write fiction with supernatural and pagan themes.

While still in his teens, Lucien sends a manuscript to a publishing firm.The publisher rejects the manuscript.A few months later, Lucien purchases a newly-published novel which contains entire chapters lifted from his "rejected" manuscript. Saddened and angered, Lucien again wanders to the Roman ruins. There, he happens to meet a neighbor girl and has a sexual encounter which he associates with the fauns and nymphs of Roman mythology.

Lucien's imagination is so active that the border between reality and fantasy is sometimes blurred.In an effort to reach new heights of imagination and expression, Lucien begins to induce mystic experiences and trances.He dabbles in the occult, engages in masochistic rituals and starves himself to induce visions. His neighbors and relatives notice the changes in Lucien and encourage him to eat, to get plenty of rest, to give up writing and to pursue a real occupation.

Unexpectedly, Lucien receives an inheritance which enables him to move to London and devote himself to writing full time.By this time, Lucien is caught in a downward spiral of increasingly disturbing visions, induced by a number of unhealthy methods.He manages to completely erase the border between fantasy and reality, but ironically, he has so disabled himself that he can no longer write coherently.

Machen's story reads almost like poetry and is told in an artful, subtle fashion.The imagery of the first chapter is indescribably beautiful.The final four chapters, detailing his character's descent into insanity, are vivid and horrific. Machen describes the final sensations of a dying brain so vividly and in such detail that I cannot help but wonder how close Machen came to the same fate.Hill of Dreams is among the finest portrayals of the self-destructive artist, ranking with Coleridge's Kubla Khan, Mann's Doctor Faustus and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantasique.Through repeated allusions to Poe, Coleridge and DeQuincey, Machen pays tribute to other great writers who have tried the same path to greatness.Although Machen has achieved cult icon status (due, in part, to his role in the creation of the Angel of Mons legend), he is underrated as an author.I am greatly impressed with all of his works that I've read thus far.Hill of Dreams is the most impressive of his works.

Lyrical
"The Hill of Dreams" is arguably Machen's finest work, and that is saying something.While there is definitely a story and most especially interesting characterization, the star feature of this jewel of a novel is Machen's rich descriptive prose, virtually prose poetry.It possesses exactly the dreamlike quality the story demands, and becomes a dream itself, a vision of rural beauty, into which the reader may enter.The lush prose, which seems to be supporting the story as a river supports and carries a boat, is eventually seen to have been a necessary tool, and all the elements of story-telling come together at the finale to round off a work of terrible beauty.

Hill of Dreams

Arthur Machen, master of the macabre, created something a little bit different in this book. Coming from a childhood background that left him lonely and prone to living in imaginative worlds himself, the main character here is exactly the same. Lucien Taylor, unable to attend Oxford because of a lack of money, "lives" in his father's library. He is particularly attracted to ancient history and magic and hopes to become a writer. This hope is crushed, however, and, with the help of Annie Morgan, a woman who loves him, he escapes into an imaginary world of ancient times. There he remains, totally self-absorbed (to the chagrin of Annie), until he is jolted back to reality after receiving a small legacy. He then becomes an opium addict, which causes his death. Machen captures the moods of his characters perfectly, and this is the best of his books.

Gothic Vision of a Young Writer in 1890s London
Arthur Machen is better known for his "horror" tales such as "The Great God Pan". However, there is more to Machen that that. Machen believed in a quality of literature (and life) that cannot be pinned down - a sort of magic.

When he first came to London from rural Wales in the late 1800s, he was involved in fin-de-siecle "magic" circles - such as The Order of the Golden Dawn. He translated "fantastic" tales and in works like "The Great God Pan" created his own vision of them. However, like Harold Bloom today, he was perhaps at his best when he wrote about literature, and he did this is three forms: directly, in "Hieroglyphics", autobiographically in "Far Off Things" and "Things Near and Far", and in a fictionalized manner in "The Hill of Dreams".

The Hill of Dreams is about a young writer from the country who goes to London and wanders its streets looking for inspiration, but finds himself caught up in the city's past and becomes alienated from those around him. It is like a Peter Ackroyd novel set from 100 years ago. There is also a magic there that is all Machen's own.

Machen is a writer worth getting to know, particularly in the books mentioned above. In the end, though, "The Hill of Dreams" is his masterpiece. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

The Great God Pan
As all Machen's works: Excellent!
Brilliant and delightful use of language.
For all those who enjoyed tv series like The Twilight Zone, Dr. Who or even Star Trek, writers like Machen, Blackwood, Bloch and J.L Borges, are key to understand the concept of parallel worlds or dimensions to ours and the existance of portals leading us to those places.
A dimensional concept that ancient civilizations like Romans, Greek, Maya and many other used to explain the contact and communication with ancestor.
It is not pure fear or massacres what makes me read writers like Machen, is the pure fact of enjoying the perfect use of literature to make us believe that imagination can become real.
It really is the Power of Imagination. ... Read more

Book Description
Jacques Casanova de Seingaultwas a Venetian adventurer and author. His autobiography, "Histoire de ma vie" (Story of My Life), is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. So famous a womanizer was the Italian-born Casanova that, a full two centuries after his death, his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Short and sweet!
Is it "impostor" or "imposter"?--that is the question that nagged me while I read The Three Impostors.Which spelling is correct, and which is the imposter/or?The lexicographers need to come down hard on this issue!!

That aside, The Three Impostors is a black diamond of a little dark fantasy, told in hypnotic descriptive prose.The book is structured as a series of stories within a frame story, much like the Decameron or Canterbury Tales, only the frame story has its own plot and is the most interesting of all in The Three Impostors.The sub-stories range from the strange to the macabre, to the frankly paranormal, each entertaining in its own right besides what it contributes to the whole.Moreover, Machen's style glitters with curious flights of thought and characterizations, well nigh as enertaining as the story itself.

What struck me most of all about The Three Impostors is how panoramically influential this short book is, as if it were the whole nine muses of twentieth century literature!The Maltese Falcon owes an obvious debt to the Gold Tiberius.I think the Novel of the Dark Valley is a clear precursor to The Trial, and obviously, Lovecraft derived his whole schtick from the Adventure of the Missing Brother.Machen himself must have been influenced by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, published about 10 years earlier, but Machen amplifies and enhances the original, rather than narrowing it.

Altogether, The Three Impostors, however you spell it, was well worth the 150 pages of reading time.Dyson and Phillipps are my new literary heroes!I would recommend the edition from Chaosium, since this includes several other good Machen works for about the same price as the other editions.

An undiscovered diamond
This little book is an unexpected but welcome surprise in the world of literature. Jorge Luis Borges wrote the introduction in the Spanish edition that I own. And he was right, few people know the existence of this great mistery novel, otherwise it would be already a classic.

In has the flavour of Dickens and the imagination and dexterity of Agatha Christie.

His name is Arthur Machen.

Death In Disguise
Horror master Arthur Machen's crowning achievement, a still shocking compendium of interwoven short horror tales. In late 19th century London, a scientist and an unpublished writer join forces as amateur detectives in an attempt to solve a minor but puzzling mystery which ultimately leads to the discovery of a truly diabolical conspiracy.In the course of their investigations, the two men find themselves repeatedly surrendering their attention to a series of seemingly outlandish tales spun by an assortment of eccentric story tellers.The stories, which all deal with imposture of some kind, are only tangentially related to each other, yet offer the somewhat bumbling sleuths important clues to the mystery at hand.Machen builds suspense slowly and methodically, masterfully leading the reader on to a completely unexpected, gruesome climax.Comical, tragic, sophisticated, violent, horrific, and even downright disgusting, THE THREE IMPOSTORS is a classic horror novel of sly deception and wit.

The 1995 Everyman paperback is the only critical edition of this remarkably rich book released to date, offering a scholarly introduction (by editor David Trotter) that carefully details Machen's main influences (chiefly Robert Louis Stevenson) and themes (imposture of various kinds, also derived from Stevenson).A short text summary nicely encapsulates the narrative's various twists and turns.Finally, a section entitled "Machen and His Critics" provides a welcome offering of mostly contemporaneous critical responses to this remarkable book; while many of these reviews were laudatory, quite a few passionately outraged quotes reveal just how shocking THE THREE IMPOSTORS must truly have been in its time.

An Excellently Presented Anthology
Arthur Machen can easily be described as one of the writers who providedthe foundation to the 20th century fantasy and horror literature. This oneis a great collection of horror stories, most of which has a quiteLovecraftian style. If you are new to Machen, and/or like stories with atinge of "Mythos Horror" in them, you'll definetely like thisone. ... Read more

Book Description
"But I remember when I was five or six I heard them talking about me when they thought I was not noticing. They were saying how queer I was a year or two before, and how nurse had called my mother to come and listen to me talking all to myself, and I was saying words that nobody could understand. I was speaking the Xu language, but I only remember a very few of the words, as it was about the little white faces that used to look at me when I was lying in my cradle."

From The White People

This volume contains two of Arthur Machen's best stories: The Red Hand, a murder mystery involving flint weapons, treasure, and the chalking of a red hand upon a wall; and The White People, a story thought by H.P. Lovecraft to be the second best horror tale ever written. It centers around a young girl's diary, relating her encounters with the deadly inhabitants of an alternate world.

... Read more

Book Description
Arthur Machen's classic tale, The Great God Pan. This is the book that launched one of the most influential writers of fantasy and horror, a story echoed in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, and T. E. D. Klein, among many others. Copper Penny Press books are in an easy to read format.Download Description
It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two others men of good position and ample means, perished miserably in the almost precisely the same manner. Lord Swanleigh was found one morning in his dressing-room, hanging from a peg affixed to the wall, and Mr. Collier-Stuart and Mr. Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Gothic Horror
I got this because the author was at one time affiliated with the Golden Dawn. It is horror that was an influence of H.P. Lovecraft. I liked it because the author maintains an aura of darkness that could be disturbing. This is neo pagan horror that you usually don't see any more. Stehpen King commercialized horror but this is more obscure. A few pages in I already thought highly of it. I thought it was cool that he was such an icon back at the turn of the last century.

The Great God Pan.
"An incoherent nightmare of sex . . . "- The Westminster Gazette.

_The Great God Pan_ is the first book of the Welsh writer of weird tales and mystic Arthur Machen, published first in 1894.This book was regarded as a form of decadent literature and was panned by critics of the Victorian era.Arthur Machen was a fascinating character and antiquarian whose weird writings reveal his learning in the occult and his mystical inclinations.Machen was an Anglo-Catholic opposed to modernism in all its forms who was to join the secret society of the Golden Dawn, though he would reject the nefarious doings of such individuals as Aleister Crowley.Machen had an enormous influence on later writers of weird tales including especially H. P. Lovecraft who mentions him in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" as an important influence.This book, republished by Creation Classics, is complimented by automatic drawings of Austin Osman Spare, a friend of Machen and a fellow occultist and mystic.In addition, this book contains Machen's introduction to the story proper.

_The Great God Pan_ begins with a scientist/doctor and his friend attempting to perform a surgical operation on the brain of a seventeen year old girl, Mary, so that she may "see the Great God Pan".The doctor discusses his theories of "transcendental medicine", in which he believes he can control her through this operation.The operation fails and Mary is rendered an "idiot".The story then skips to the memoirs of Mr. Clarke, the friend of Dr. Raymond from the experiment on Mary.Mr. Clarke recounts a tale involving a young girl named Helen Vaughan, who encounters a pagan idol from Roman times in a field.The story involves murder and intrigue as well as a demonic sex change, which occur later in the tale.Machen's mystical inclinations can be seen as he presents the reader with an alchemical transformation.

Though this book was initially criticized harshly by the establishment in Victorian times, it has endured and set the place of Arthur Machen as an important writer of weird tales.Machen's stories are quite unique and his influence on subsequent writers of supernatural fiction continues to endure.

LOVE this little book - wish it never ended!!
Wow, I read this on a plane ride and didn't want to put it down.Machen did an amazing job of creating this atmosphere of terror and horror and dread and evil...without ever actually spilling blood and showing us what happened.The way he described what transpired with Helen was awesome.The way he led us along these different paths and then brought them all home so that everything made perfect sense was brilliant.I would have loved more of a backstory and more details into Pan...but that's minor.Can't say enough great things about this little book of "terror."Has something this short and this powerful been written in the last 20 or 30 or 40 years?Great stuff!

The power of suggestion....
The REAL grandeur of this little gothic gem lies in the power of suggestion.Machen, much like a Nicholas Roeg film or the Lovecraft mythology, only hints at the unspeakable horrors in "Great God Pan" and therein lies the novel's strength, short and negligable as it may seem. It's up to the reader to "fill in the blanks", and make the right connections as to which abominations lurks beneath the sinister series of seemingly unconnected events, that are displayed in "Great God Pan."

Scattered around in the book are twisted images of the many abominable faces that the Great God Pan may take, drawn by the esoteric occultist Austin Osman Spare.

Dark Pagan Horror
I came to know about Arthur Machen and his work through the brilliant mastermind of H.P.Lovecraft; his references, both in fiction ("The Dunwich Horror" makes a very clear statement about Machen's influence in his body of work) and non-fiction ("Supernatural Horror in Literature"), ultimately inspired me to go search something about this author. Needless to say, I found virtually nothing in any bookstore. It was during a trip to Madrid, Spain, where I finally found a book by Machen containing "The Great God Pan" and many others. I was shocked.

"The Great God Pan" was the first story I read by Arthur Machen, and I only had to read the first few pages to know I was going to like it. Indeed, I did, although it was a little short for my taste.

The ideas Machen makes you travel through are some of the finest in horror literature, and the Cosmic view of Pan, is very near the likes of Lovecraft. One can easily see where the influence Machen exerted over Lovecraft is. The only difference is that Machen did believe in some supernatural force existing within the Universe, whereas Lovecraft was the complete opposite.

Dark Pagan Horror is what Machen delivers, and he does so with such a style, elegance (at least the Castilian translation, I still have to read the originals in English, but I am assuming the originals are much better) and wit, you just can't help but to stay with it until you are done. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Weird Tale.
_The Weird Tale:Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and H. P. Lovecraft_ is an account of various writers of the weird tale by S. T. Joshi.These authors wrote stories which may be regarded as "weird tales", a phrase used by Lovecraft especially in his famous essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature".The weird tale may be distinguished from the ghost story, science fiction, and psychological horror.This book consists of an introduction followed by accounts of each of the various writers and ending with important bibliographical information.Joshi's viewpoint is clearly sympathetic to scientific rationalism and atheism, which is problematic, though he does provide a good if somewhat biased overview of each of these major writers.

The first chapter of this book is "Arthur Machen:The Mystery of the Universe".Machen, born in Wales, was an antiquarian who developed a unique worldview opposed to Protestantism, rationalism, materialism, progress, and puritanism which emphasized his Anglo-Catholicism.Though Joshi chooses to regard this as a fault, I believe Machen's worldview remains particularly interesting.Machen wrote several weird stories which were based in his worldview including such tales as "The White People" and "The Great God Pan".

The second chapter of this book is "Lord Dunsany:The Career of a Fantaisiste".Dunsany was an Irish writer and fantaisiste who wrote plays and later stories.Dunsany's writings emphasized outer gods, though he himself may have been an atheist.Indeed, Joshi describes Dunsany's writings as "Nietzsche in a fairy tale".Dunsany's famous works include _The Gods of Pegana_ and _The King of Elfland's Daughter_.

The third chapter of this book is "Algernon Blackwood:The Expansion of Consciousness".Algernon Blackwood was a mystical writer who rebelled against an Evangelical upbringing to embrace the wisdom of the East including the _Bhagavad Gita_ and the doctrines of Buddhism.Blackwood's writings reveal a love for nature and an enthrallment with mysticism and the expansion of consciousness.Blackwood was also involved to some extent in the secret mystical society, the Golden Dawn.Joshi traces out the development of Blackwood's philosophy and his stories in terms of "awe", "horror", and "childhood".Blackwood's famous tales include "The Wendigo", "The Willows", and _The Centaur_.

The fourth chapter of this book is "M. R. James:The Limitations of the Ghost Story".M. R. James was the son of an Anglican priest who wrote ghost stories in the genre of the weird tale.While James never developed fully a worldview, something which Joshi believes to be problematic, his stories nevertheless provide an encounter with the supernatural.

The fifth chapter of this book is "Ambrose Bierce:Horror and Satire".Ambrose Bierce was a caustic wit, a cynic, and an atheist who served in the Union army during the Civil War and later was to disappear heading south towards Mexico (presumably having been caught up in the Mexican Civil War).Bierce's stories feature elements of his extreme cynicism and misanthropy.Bierce also wrote ghost stories featuring encounters involving the Civil War.In addition, Bierce compiled the infamous _Devil's Dictionary_ revealing his cynicism about politics and religion.

The sixth chapter of this book is "H. P. Lovecraft:The Decline of the West".Lovecraft was a unique writer of the weird tale, who wrote for pulp magazines and engaged in amateur journalism.Lovecraft's writings reveal his worldview which is materialistic and rationalist (though he would later come to reject his earlier dogmatic materialism under the influence of developments in theoretical physics including relativity theory and quantum mechanics).In addition, Lovecraft's political beliefs prove enigmatic, though he began as an aristocratic ultra-conservative and a racialist who expressed abhorrence at immigrants and other races in his stories, he came to embrace a form of "fascistic socialism" and to marry a Jew.Lovecraft was particularly influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche and Spengler and his stories reveal his belief in the decline of the West thesis.Lovecraft's stories emphasize cosmicism in which man is shown to be utterly without hope in a cosmos empty of meaning and in which both science and religion fail him.Lovecraft was influenced by Dunsany's outer gods and wrote much on elder beings from other dimensions, though he was later to "demythologize" his gods making them into extraterrestrials.Lovecraft also was influenced by the folklore of New England.Lovecraft's famous works include "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and _At the Mountains of Madness_.

This book offers an excellent introduction to various writers who composed weird fiction.Joshi's biases are apparent, but his extensive research into the writings of these individuals is tremendous.In particular, it is interesting to note how each of these writers formed a unique philosophical worldview which came to influence their stories to such a great extent.

A real critic for real readers
In The Weird Tale, Joshi analyses the work of half a dozen writers whose influence on the modern supernatural horror story is either incalculable (Lovecraft, James and possibly Bierce) or else not nearly large enough (Blackwood, Machen, Dunsany). Joshi's central theoretical tenet is that weird fiction is an inherently philosophical mode, since it offers writers the chance to remake the world according to their own rules. H P Lovecraft is the prime example, possessing a coherent and thoroughly worked out philosophy which colours and powers all his best work. Much the same applies to Blackwood, though his mystical and sometimes sentimental author's personality was the polar opposite of Lovecraft's. Similarly, Machen's mysticism (whenever he could keep off his Anglo-Catholic hobbyhorse for long enough), Bierce's misanthropy and Dunsany's unique and complex blend of anti-modernism and ultra-Olympian cynicism all provide Joshi with a lens through which to see their work in its most rewarding light. The only writer for whom Joshi displays little enthusiasm is M R James, primarily because his work never goes beyond the ghastly-revenant plot - however inventively James may manage it at times. Joshi is miraculously well-read, has a sharp eye for the best among frequently voluminous works, and is even honest enough to say when he's talking from prejudice rather than analysis. The Weird Tale brings genuine literary criticism to bear on a genre where literary and critical standards have been debased to a condition rather worse than that of science fiction, and is of vast help in pointing out the works to whose quality writers (and readers) of supernatural fiction could aspire. ... Read more

Book Description
"Explosion at Munition Works in the Northern District: Many Fatalities." The working man told me about it, and added some dreadful details. Corpses so terribly maimed that coffins had been kept covered; faces mutilated as if by some gnawing animal. . . . I took a tram to the location of the disaster; a raw and hideous shed with a walled yard about it, and a shut gate. The roof was quite undamaged -- this had had been a strange accident. There had been an explosion of sufficient violence to kill work-people in the building, but the building itself showed no wounds or scars.Download Description
The wife of the dead man, Joseph Cradock, finding her husband lying motionless on the dewy turf, went white and stricken up the path to the village and got two men who bore the body to the farm. Lewis was sent for, and knew at once when he saw the dead man that he had perished in the way that the little Roberts boy had perished--whatever that awful way might be. ... Read more