Arthur Machen

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Arthur Machen, born in 1863 – 15 December 1947, was Arthur Llewellyn Jones, a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early twentieth century.

He is best known for his influential supernatural, realism, and horror fiction.

Stephen King's bookla The Great God Pan (1890-1994) has a reputation as a horror film, with Stephen King describing it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language." He is also known for his book "The Bowmen," a short story that was widely distributed in fact, and which inspired the legend of the Angels of Mons.

Early years

Arthur Llewelyn Jones was born in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, and was a member of the Royal Institute of Macen. The home of his birth, which is located in The Square in Caerleon, is adjacent to the Priory Hotel and is today branded with a commemorative blue plaque. The stunning landscape of Monmouthshire (which he usually referred to by the name of the medieval Welsh kingdom, Gwent), with its roots of Celtic, Roman, and medieval times, made a strong impression on him, and his admiration of it is at the root of many of his works.

Machen was descended from a long line of clergymen, the family having origins in Carmarthenshire. In 1864, when Machen was two, his father, John Edward Jones, became vicar of Llanddewi Fach, about five miles north of Caerleon, and Machen was brought up to the rectory. Jones had adopted his wife's maiden name, Machen, to leave a legacy, hence "Jones-Machen"; his son was baptized under that name, but later used a simplified version of his full name, Arthur Machen, as a pen name.

Fred Hando, a local historian and folklorist, traces Machen's fascination with the occult to a collection of Household Words in his father's rectory library, in which he discovered an entrancing article on alchemy at the age of eight. Machen's other early reading is chronicled by Hando:

Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received a top classical education at the age of eleven. Family poverty ruled out university attendance, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to enroll medical school but was unable to enroll. Machen, on the other hand, displayed literary promise in 1881 when he published "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. As he returned to London, he lived in relative poverty, as a writer's clerk, and as a children's tutor.

He published his second book, The Anatomy of Tobacco, in 1884, and found work with publisher and bookbinder George Redway as a cataloger and magazine editor. Bêche de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir, Bêche de Navarre, Translation of Brétène de Navarre's Heptameron, and the Memoirs of Casanova resulted in further work as a translator from French. Machen's translations in a vibrant English style became common ones for many years.

Machen married Amelia (Amy) Hogg, an unconventional music instructor with a passion for the theatre who had literary colleagues in London's bohemian circles in 1887, the year his father died. Machen had introduced Machen to writer and occultist A. E. Waite, who was to become one of Machen's closest friends. Machen also knew some literary figures, such as M. P. Shiel and Edgar Jepson. Machen began to inherit a string of legacies from Scottish relatives that allowed him to gradually devote more time to writing shortly after his marriage.

Around 1890, Machen began to publish in literary journals, writing stories inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's work, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. The Great God Pan, the author of his first major success, was born from this. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the renowned Keynotes Series, which was part of the then-impressive aesthetic revival of the period. Machen's tale was widely praised for its sexual and horrific content, and it was quickly in demand, in a second edition.

In 1895, Machen produced The Three Impostors, a collection of interwoven stories. The book and the stories within were to be regarded as one of Machen's finest works. However, Machen's association with decadent horror made it impossible for him to find a publisher for new works following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde earlier this year. Accordingly, although he will write some of his best works over the next few years, some of his best works will be published soon. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the film "The White People" and the Jade stories.

Amy Machen's wife died of cancer after a long period of sickness in 1899. Machen had a devastating effect on the city. He only recovered from his loss over the next year partially thanks to his close friendship with A. E. Waite. Machen joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn because of Waite's influence at this time, but Machen's involvement in the company was not long or deep, according to him.

Machen's recovery was aided by his sudden change of work, joining Frank Benson's company of travelling actors in 1901 and becoming a member of his company of visiting players, a field that took him around the country.

This culminated in a second marriage to Dorothie Purefoy Hudleston in 1903, which brought Machen much joy. Machen managed to find a publisher for his earlier published work Hieroglyphics, as an examination of literature, which found that true literature must convey "ecstasy." As the book The House of Souls collected his most influential works of the nineties and introduced them to a new audience in 1906, Machen's literary career began to flourish once more. He also published Dr Stiggins' Views and Principles, a satirical collection of his unpublished works, which is generally considered one of his poorest works.

Machen was also researching Celtic Christianity, the Holy Grail, and King Arthur at this moment. Machen argued that the legends of the Grail were based on dim recollections of the Celtic Church's rites, which he wrote regularly. These concepts were also present in his book The Unknown Glory, which he wrote at the time, marking the first use in fiction of the belief that the Grail's surviving into modern times in some form, as by Charles Williams (War in Heaven), Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), and George Lucas (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). The Hill of Dreams, Machen's masterpiece, was finally published in 1907, but it wasn't widely known at the time.

Machen continued to work in various companies and with journalistic duties for the next few years, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to work, and his legacies were long overdue. Machen was also attending literary salons such as the New Bohemians and the Square Club.

In 1910, Machen accepted a full-time journalist's position at Alfred Harmsworth's Evening News. In February 1912, Hilary's son was born and Janet in 1917, followed by a daughter Janet. Machen returned to public attention for the first time in twenty years following the publication of "The Bowmen" and subsequent media coverage surrounding the "Angels of Mons" episode. He published a collection of stories based on this crazia, the bulk of which were morale-boosting propaganda, but the two most notable, "The Great Return" (1915) and the novella The Terror (1917), were more convincing. During the war, he also published a series of autobiographical essays, which were later reprinted in book form as Far Off Things. During the war years, Machen also met and promoted the work of a fellow Welshman, Caradoc Evans.

Machen was dissatisfied with newspaper work in general, and it was only the desire to make money for his family that kept him at it. The money was useful in 1919 when he moved to a bigger house with a garden in St John's Wood, which became a popular venue for literary gatherings attended by artists including painter Augustus John, D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Jerome K. Jerome. Machen's removal from the Evening News in 1921 came as a relief in one sense, but it also caused financial difficulties. Machen, on the other hand, was praised as a top-street character by his contemporaries, but he remained in demand as an essay writer for a considerable portion of the twenties.

Machen's literary fortunes resurgent in 1922. The Secret Glory, which some believed to be Machen's last masterpiece, was finally published, as well as his autobiography Far Off Things, and Machen's Casanova, The House of Souls, and The Hill of Dreams, which were all available. Machen's books had now found a new audience and publishers in the United States, and a series of calls for republications of books had appeared. American Machen devotees, including Vincent Startt, James Branch Cabell, and Carl Van Vechten, were among the many who participated in this process.

The publication of a collected edition of his books (the "Caerleon Edition") and a bibliography in 1923 was another sign of his rising fame. Things Near and Far, the third and final volume in 1924, was also published in that year. Machen's earlier works were soon becoming much-intending collectors' items, a position they have never had before. He published a series of poor reviews of his own work in 1924, but no further details were given, titled Precious Balms. During this period of prosperity, Machen's home attracted many visitors and social gatherings, and Machen gained new acquaintances, such as Oliver Stonor.

The republican revival was mostly over by 1926, and Machen's income decreased. He continued republishing older books in collected editions, as well as writing essays and articles for various journals and newspapers, and assisting with introductions and introductions to both his own and those of other writers, such as Monmouthshire historian Fred Hando's The Pleasant Land of Gwent (1944). He became a manuscript reader for publisher Ernest Benn in 1927, which gave him a much-needed regular income until 1933.

Machen and his family moved from London to Amersham in Buckinghamshire in 1929, but they also suffered with financial difficulties. When he received a Civil List pension of £100 per annum in 1932, he was granted some credit for his literary contributions, but the absence of work from Benn's a year later made life difficult once more. In the thirties, there were two more collections of Machen's shorter works published, partially as a result of John Gawsworth's promotion of Machen, who also began working on a Machen biography that was only released in 2005 thanks to Arthur Machen's Friends.

Machen's financial difficulties were only fully resolved by the literary appeal, which was launched in 1943 for his eightieth birthday. As they included Max Beerbohm, T. S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw, Walter de la Mare, Algernon Blackwood, and John Masefield, the initial names on the appeal show the widespread acknowledgement of Machen's reputation as a distinguished man of letters. Machen lived the last few years of his life, until 1947, in relative peace, thanks to his appeal's success.

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