Horror author, AR Braun and I came up with a nifty idea. What if we picked a lesser known “dark” author of yester-year and preached about them to bring an awareness of their work. Work that is so pivotal, the relevance of said work still influences and pushes the envelope of literature to this day. This will be a daily/weekly blog for myself. So stay tuned for more info on the creators, and movers and shakers that made this world of fantastical darkness we all love possible. There words still speak to us till’ this day.

So, without further ado, today’s author of yester-year is the legendary, Arthur Machen, 3/3/1863-12/15/1947 

Why?

From the beginning of his literary career, Machen was the first to espouse a mystical belief that the ordinary world hid a more mysterious and strange world beyond. His gothic and decadent works of the 1890s concluded that the lifting of this veil could lead to any number of things… madness, sex, or worse… usually worse. All of this during a time when writers wrote about vampires, ghosts, and the like, Machen’s work was a breath of fresh air and stood out like a sore thumb. Machen was a great enthusiast for literature that expressed the “rapture, beauty, adoration, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire for the unknown” that he summed up in the word ecstasy.

What influence?

His intense, atmospheric stories of horror and the supernatural have been read and enjoyed by many modern horror and fantasy writers, influencing directly H.P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Graham Joyce, Simon Clark, Tim Lebbon, Mark Samuels, and T. E. D. Klein, to name but a few. Klein’s novel The Ceremonies was partly based on Machen’s “The White People”, and Straub’s novel Ghost Story was influenced by “The Great God Pan”.

An amazing writer of note himself, H.P. Lovecraft would not have written his genre-shaking short stories if not for, Machen. Lovecraft pays tribute to the influence by directly incorporating some of Machen’s creations and references, such as Nodens and Aklo, into his Cthulhu Mythos and using similar plotlines, most notably seen by a comparison of “The Dunwich Horror” to “The Great God Pan” and of “The Whisperer in Darkness” to “The Novel of the Black Seal”. Other Lovecraft tales with a debt or reference to Machen include “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Festival”, “Cool Air”, “The Descendant”, and “The Colour Out of Space”.

In an interview with, Stephen King concerning his short story, “N”, King said about the influence for his story, “Not Lovecraft; it’s a riff on Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” which is one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language. Mine isn’t anywhere near that good, but I loved the chance to put neurotic behavior—obsessive/compulsive disorder—together with the idea of a monster-filled macroverse.”

The word!

Machen’s first novella, “The Great God Pan” (1894) A must read for anyone interested in dark, horror, and fantastical literature. Widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content. Due to this it sold well, going into a second edition.

“The Three Imposters” (1895) Machen’s second novel. This one being more episodic in its approach. Publisher John Lane, wary of the atmosphere following the trial of Oscar Wilde, asked Machen to censor his manuscript. Barring the omission of one word, Machen refused to do this. Again, another must read.

“The Hill Of Dreams” (1907) A somewhat autobiographical account of a young man growing up in Wales. Again, another must read.

Many more! Go check em’ out!

Where?

To learn more about, Arthur Machen and his work, please visit his website, Friends of Arthur Machen here: http://www.machensoc.demon.co.uk/

A huge thanks to, AR Braun for his inspiration and help with this mission of turning readers and writers of dark and or fantastical fiction on to the writers who helped start and shape it… and still hold sway. AR, you da’ man!

An Excerpt? (When possible due to copyright laws)

“I can fancy what you saw. Yes; it is horrible enough; but after all, it is an old story, an old mystery played…. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale. But you and I, at all events, have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself a form. Oh, Austin, how can it be? How is it that the very sunlight does not turn to blackness before this thing, the hard earth melt and boil beneath such a burden?” –Arthur Machen, “The Great God Pan”

-Ben

6 Responses to “Dark Authors Of Yester-Year”