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.LeatherBound. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. 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. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time.
This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.Īround 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 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. 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. 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. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. 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. He also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.Īt the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. 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 is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. Arthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s.
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