Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem 'Eleusinia' on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. He also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.Īt the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. His long story The Great God Pan made him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreams is generally considered his masterpiece. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. Machen's dark imaginings of the reality behind ancient beliefs feature again in the acclaimed, mesmerising short story 'The White People' and the curious tale 'The Shining Pyramid', also in this volume.Īrthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. He immediately became one of the most talked-about writers of the last years of the nineteenth century, while the publication marked the start of his ongoing influence on modern fantasy and horror. He had translated Casanova's memoirs and was living on a small inheritance. Its author, Arthur Machen, was a struggling unknown writer living in London. The Great God Pan was a sensation when first published in 1894. Many men are infatuated with her beauty, but great beauty has a price, sometimes you have to pay with the only thing you have left.

Twenty years later, feted society hostess Helen Vaughan becomes the source of much fevered speculation. She has seen the great god Pan and will die giving birth to a daughter. An experiment into the sources of the human brain through the mind of a young woman has gone horribly wrong.

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen