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Dreads and Drolls
This volume contains sixty studies, mostly from real life, each of which, by its capacity for inspiring terror or causing amused wonder, qualifies as the ‘Dread’ or ‘Droll’ of Arthur Machen’s general heading. ‘To be able so to tell the bare truth that it seems a magnificent lie’ is the qualification which has attracted Machen to the most outstanding of his narrations. When Dreads and Drolls was first published in 1926 it contained twenty-nine articles reprinted from London’s The Graphic. We have great pleasure in more than doubling that number by including all of his contributions from that magazine. To ‘The Euston Square Mystery’, ‘The Adventure of the Long-Lost Brother’ and others we have been able to add ‘A Castle in Celtic Myths’, ‘A Pretty Parricide’, ‘One Night When I Was Frightened’ and many more.There is a tendency towards the re-telling of notable eighteenth-century crimes among these ‘Dreads’ and ‘Drolls’, but Machen also manages to illuminate such a wide range of subjects as the Holy Grail, the ‘Little People’ and cookery. In this entertaining and diverse collection of essays, Machen manages to show how little human nature has changed through the centuries.We can admire Machen, in the words he uses to commend Grimaldi, as a man with an ‘admirable scent for mystery and capacity of creating it’.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1926
About the author
Arthur Machen
1,213 books1,076 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 22, 2015
Machen at his most delightful. Snippets of London lore, and disquisitions on everything from inns and clubs to visions of the dead, devilled kidneys to witchcraft, thievery to the true meaning of wealth. My favourite was probably the tale of the ghost pianist of Coney Court, who was still, though a spectre, good enough to pay his rent in a timely fashion...
August 9, 2018
An absolutely fabulous read!
This is a book of short articles (maybe from his journalistic work?) covering everything from his thoughts on Christmas, folk tales and lots of interesting mysterious stories about missing people and interesting characters in and around London and South Wales.
Some of the stories are written in language that is a challenge to understand, but this is all in all this amounts to one or two stories.
Whilst some of the stories are creepy, they are in no way connected to his horror output. This is very different animal.
A fantastic collection, and very much worth reading.
This is a book of short articles (maybe from his journalistic work?) covering everything from his thoughts on Christmas, folk tales and lots of interesting mysterious stories about missing people and interesting characters in and around London and South Wales.
Some of the stories are written in language that is a challenge to understand, but this is all in all this amounts to one or two stories.
Whilst some of the stories are creepy, they are in no way connected to his horror output. This is very different animal.
A fantastic collection, and very much worth reading.
August 10, 2019
Read the Tartarus edition, pb, whilst holidaying in Ardgour. Perfect accompaniment.
September 7, 2024
Sitting in front of a roaring fire with a snifter of brandy or some mulled wine, while Arthur Machen reminisces about London, taverns, mysteries, history,.....
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews