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Children of the Pool and Other Stories
Anthology by Arthur Machen
255 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1936
2 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Machen
1,132 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 3, 2020
With this underrated final volume of stories Machen isn't delivering anything as indelible or life-changing for a reader as The White People or The Hill of Dreams, but each of the stories here, despite a lack of polish compared to Machen's finest works, are in their way enjoyable, with the standouts for me being 'Out of the Picture' and 'Change' -- two returns to his 1890s dark faerie style of horror.
May 2, 2011
Supposedly Machen in his decadence, and it's true that none of these stories actually hang together or pay off in the traditional sense. But the storytelling, at times, is positively Kipling-nimble, the sense of wonder palpable, the compassion and imagination un-eroded by living in the way those qualities usually are.
April 17, 2023
3.5⭐
CONTENTS:
Children of the Pool 4.25⭐
Out of the Earth 3.5⭐
Change 3⭐
The Exalted Omega 2.75⭐
The Tree of Life 3⭐
Out of the Picture 5⭐
The story opens with the following:
In the old days — which means anything from ten to thirty years ago — there was a question which used to be asked now and then at studio parties and Chelsea pubs. The question was:
‘But who was the twisted man?’
And it was often followed by another:
‘But where did M’Calmont take himself off to?’
M’Calmont, a Scottish artist, is trying to create a new style for his painting, a combination of 18th century landscape realism and concepts from the Kabbalah to heighten and vitalize his work. The narrator, a newspaper reporter who occasionally covers art exhibitions, sees in all of M'Calmont's paintings a demonic figure that in each successive picture grows larger and approaches the foreground more. He asks M'Calmont about it, but the artist evades the question angrily.
The Bright Boy 3⭐
CONTENTS:
Children of the Pool 4.25⭐
Out of the Earth 3.5⭐
Change 3⭐
The Exalted Omega 2.75⭐
The Tree of Life 3⭐
Out of the Picture 5⭐
The story opens with the following:
In the old days — which means anything from ten to thirty years ago — there was a question which used to be asked now and then at studio parties and Chelsea pubs. The question was:
‘But who was the twisted man?’
And it was often followed by another:
‘But where did M’Calmont take himself off to?’
M’Calmont, a Scottish artist, is trying to create a new style for his painting, a combination of 18th century landscape realism and concepts from the Kabbalah to heighten and vitalize his work. The narrator, a newspaper reporter who occasionally covers art exhibitions, sees in all of M'Calmont's paintings a demonic figure that in each successive picture grows larger and approaches the foreground more. He asks M'Calmont about it, but the artist evades the question angrily.
The Bright Boy 3⭐
September 7, 2011
I actually only read The Children of the Pool but couldn't find it as a single entry. I liked the short story until about halfway through when it took a dramatic detour in a direction I wasn't expecting, yet didn't particularly care for. It felt more like a critical essay than a piece of short fiction.
While the writing was fairly well done, ultimately I just wasn't that into the tale.
While the writing was fairly well done, ultimately I just wasn't that into the tale.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews