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Tales of Horror and the Supernatural: Volume Two
A new collection of blood-blanching chillers by the famed authority on evil and the occult! Arthur Machen, a longtime connoisseur of the mystical forces of the supernatural, spins his tales of horror with a bizarre, shadowy quality certain to ensnare any reader's mind.Machen was a relentless and educated seeker of truths in the sinister world beyond this life. His personal obsession was to delve to the very core of the malign, elemental forces that destroy modern man.As a teller of tales, Machen was a master of technique. His craft and precision of language evoke dark, lingering vibrations from the ancient world. And it is a frightening world where fiendish spells suffocate unsuspecting souls.Are you strong enough for this voyage backward into the fathoms of evil?The Novel of the Black Seal (1895) noveletteThe Novel of the White Powder (1895) shortstoryThe Bowmen (1914) shortstoryThe Happy Children (1920) shortstoryThe Bright Boy (1936) noveletteOut of the Earth (1915) shortstoryN (1936) noveletteChildren of the Pool (1936) shortstoryThe Terror (1916) novel (aka The A Mystery)
284 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
33 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Machen
1,131 books1,018 followersArthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. 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 also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. 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. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. 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.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. 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. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. 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.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 8, 2012
Not bad, but not great. I much preferred the first volume in this set, as this one focuses a little too much on the fantastic in the mundane, rather than going flat-out for the otherworldly. Machen's style is always a pleasure, and how I wish Poe had written, but even that has a hard time redeeming the banality of some of these stories.
July 10, 2019
Well, this was better than the previous Machen collection I read, though it does include the very silly "Novel of the White Powder." Machen goes very much for the building of dread over unsaid things and of intimations of terrors arising from the unknowable past or from lost traditions, and some of the stories--"Children of the Pool" especially--pull it off rather well. I was considering rating this book higher, in fact, until the explanation it offers for the rebellion of the animals against humans in the final--and very long--story, "The Terror," is that insects and other creatures become killers of humans for a while ... because the King abdicated. Oy vey. The idea itself, of everything from bees and moths up to sheep and cattle turning on humans (always of course in small groups and in isolated places, so nobody can trig to what is going on), is interesting enough, and the story builds (if rather too slowly, at over 100 pages) readerly intrigue. But, oh that explanation! Better (this one time, perhaps) to have left it as inexplicable. Anyway, overall a decent enough collection of tales of the weird and macabre, but Machen continues to fail to impress me as the genius of horror his reputation claims he is.
July 12, 2022
Black Seal and N both get 5* - incredible creeping folk horror that taps into a seething underbelly of the British imagination (and both precedes Lovecraft and is notably better written)
1* for the truly insane conclusion to The Terror which (SPOILER ALERT) openly states that rampaging natural terror has been unleashed on England because the king has abdicated and the poor no longer know their place. LOL! Turns out Machen is a reactionary old sod after all, still worth reading for the sheer atmosphere of his carefully restrained horrors
1* for the truly insane conclusion to The Terror which (SPOILER ALERT) openly states that rampaging natural terror has been unleashed on England because the king has abdicated and the poor no longer know their place. LOL! Turns out Machen is a reactionary old sod after all, still worth reading for the sheer atmosphere of his carefully restrained horrors
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews