Arthur Machen

[Michael Connolly]

I've just discovered that Gregory Ventre's "A Recluse of the Imagination - The Three Impostors Revisited" was cited in the Everyman edition of The Three Impostors.

It also includes contemporary reviews of The Three Impostors that Machen collected. The mostly bad and scandalized reviews make very funny reading today.

The Everyman edition also cites the following from Jerome K. Jerome's autobiography My Life and Times (1926): "I gave Conan Doyle [Machen's]'Three Impostors' to read one evening, and Doyle did not sleep that night. 'Your pal Machen is a genius right enough,' said Doyle, 'but I don't take him to bed with me again.'"

Ooh err missus!

[helrunar]

Again, these are lovely!  Many thanks for sharing.

I know I may be too esoteric even for the denizens of the Vault of Evil, but I'm feeling giddy at the thought of reading the correspondence of Vincent Starrett and Christopher Millard on the topic of Machen.

cheers, H.

[bobby]

    I ordered this from the Edward R. Hamilton "Bargain Books" catalog last year. (But they're sold out of it now) I'll dig it out and list the contents if there's interest.

[Michael Connolly]

I've just started to re-read Gerald Suster's The Devil's Maze (Roc reprint, 1994), his sequel to The Three Impostors. Regarding sexual matters, Suster's a bit more on the nose (so to speak) than Machen was accused of being.

[helrunar]

I'm intrigued by the idea of somebody writing a sequel to an Arthur Machen novel.  How curious...

cheers, H.

[dem]

Nov 26, 2016 22:06:22 GMT helrunar said:

I'm intrigued by the idea of somebody writing a sequel to an Arthur Machen novel.  How curious...

cheers, H.

Gerald Suster left behind a wonderful body of work, fiction and 'non-fiction'. His kinky stalker novel, The Handyman, is a personal all time fave rave, but all of the occult thrillers are just as good (not yet had the pleasure of his erotic writings). From my very limited understanding, Suster was "a serious student and practitioner of magick" or what have you, who turned to pulp writing to supplement his income - and was brilliant at it. Fittingly, his drunken antics at various moots partially inspired Mark Samuels' misanthropic, misunderstood, probably both [delete as applicable, depending on POV] 'Edmund Bertrand', anti-star of the brilliant/ terrible [delete as applicable, etc.] Don't go to the horror convention classic, Cannibal Kings Of Horror.

[Michael Connolly]

Now that Arthur Machen is out of copyright The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories is being published by Oxford World's Classics on January 25th.



Table of Contents

Introduction

The Lost Club
The Great God Pan
The Inmost Light
The Three Impostors
The Red Hand
The Shining Pyramid
The Turanians
The Idealist
Witchcraft
The Ceremony
Psychology
Midsummer
The White People
The Bowmen
The Monstrance
N
The Tree of Life
Change
Ritual
Explanatory Notes

[andydecker]

Arthur Machen - Furcht und Schrecken (Piper 1993)  Original: The Terror-A Fantasy

Arthur Machen - Botschafter des Bösen (Piper 1993)  Original: The Three Imposters

Arthur Machen - Die Weissen Gestalten (Piper 1993) 5 stories

German Publisher Piper did a six part Machen edition in paperback. Small, very nicely produced books. The first one had a very good afterword by the editor and translator Joachim Kalka. Long OOP of course.

I only own those first three. Machen still is published in translations, at the end of the year there will be a hardcover edition in six books. Looks like the Piper translations, but edited and with some new material.

[jamesdoig]

"The Great God Pan" in the Paris Review: www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/10/31/the-horror-of-geologic-time/

[helrunar]

Thanks for this, James. Interesting little essay once I got past the stupid notion of Machen as "the H. G. Wells of horror"--that kind of thing just never works for me.

H.

[ramseycampbell]

I'd say H. G. Wells was the H. G. Wells of horror.

[Swampirella]

I made myself read "The Great God Pan" (via Gutenberg) last week because it's supposedly a great story. It did absolutely nothing for me, I'm afraid.

[helrunar]

I personally think "Novel of the Black Seal" and "Novel of the White Powder" (both short stories) and "The White People" (which may be the best story about ancient Witchcraft ever written in English) are much better than "The Great God Pan." The latter is interesting, to me at least, mainly for ethnological reasons, as a perhaps unintended commentary on certain prominent features of the late Victorian "establishment" in Britain--among other things. I have to say that when I re-read Pan a few years ago it was much more interesting to me than when I attempted to read it as a teenager.

H.

[Michael Connolly]

Jan 10, 2018 15:02:20 GMT Michael Connolly said:

Now that Arthur Machen is out of copyright The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories is being published by Oxford World's Classics on January 25th.



Table of Contents

Introduction

The Lost Club
The Great God Pan
The Inmost Light
The Three Impostors
The Red Hand
The Shining Pyramid
The Turanians
The Idealist
Witchcraft
The Ceremony
Psychology
Midsummer
The White People
The Bowmen
The Monstrance
N
The Tree of Life
Change
Ritual
Explanatory Notes

This is now available in paperback: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0198805101?condition=used&tag=bookfinder-test-b-21

[Michael Connolly]

This looks worth a look. Arthur Machen: A Bibliography by Henry Danielson (1923) includes Machen's commentary on his own writings. It can be read or downloaded from here: archive.org/details/arthurmachenbibl00dani