Arthur Machen

"I will not read it; I should never sleep again" A doctor performs an experiment on a young woman that goes horribly wrong, and a series of increasingly strange events follow: sinister woodland rituals, disappearances, suicides... Viewed as immoral and decadent on first publication in 1894, Machen's weird tale has since established itself as a classic of its genre and has been described by Stephen King as "one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language."

Something pushed out from the body there on the floor, and stretched forth a slimy, wavering tentacle... Perhaps no figure better embodies the transition from the Gothic tradition to modern horror than Arthur Machen. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, the Welsh writer produced a seminal body of tales of occult horror, spiritual and physical corruption, and malignant survivals from the primeval past which horrified and scandalized late Victorian readers. Machen's "weird fiction" has influenced generations of storytellers, from H. P. Lovecraft to Guillermo Del Toro and it remains no less unsettling today. This new collection, which includes the complete novel The Three Impostors as well as such celebrated tales as The Great God Pan and The White People, constitutes the most comprehensive critical edition of Machen yet to appear. In addition to the core late Victorian horror classics, a selection of lesser known prose poems and later tales helps to present a fuller picture of the development of Machen's weird vision. The edition's introduction and notes contextualize the life and work of this foundational figure in the history of horror. Contents: - The Lost Club - The Great God Pan - The Inmost Light - The Three Impostors - The Red Hand - The Shining Pyramid - The Turanians - The Idealist - Witchcraft - The Ceremony - Psychology - Midsummer - The White People - The Bowmen - The Monstrance - N - The Tree of Life - Change - Ritual.

"Of living creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if any can hope to equal the versatile Arthur Machen." -H.P. Lovecraft Actor, journalist, devotee of Celtic Christianity and the Holy Grail legend, Welshman Arthur Machen is considered one of the fathers of weird fiction, a master of mayhem whose work has drawn comparisons to H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Readers will find the perfect introduction to his style in this new collection. With the title story, an exercise in the bizarre that leaves the reader disoriented virtually from the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside down. "There have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin," explains the character Ambrose, "who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed.'"