The Great God Pan, Arthur Machen’s greatest short story, was a sensation when it was first published in Victorian England in 1890.
The critics were divided. His opponents called it indifferent, claiming that it did not give them the slightest shudder or fear, while his supporters felt that the story was so frightening that it should not have been written.
Arthur Llewelyn Jones (Arthur Machen) (1863–1947) was born in a small town in the county of Monmouthshire, Wales.
He experienced the mystical beauty of the landscape, along with its legends and traditions—elements that shaped his romantic sensibility and deeply influenced his later literary work.
After 1880 and for a long period of his life, he lived in London, working in various jobs (teacher, translator, actor, journalist, etc.).
His difficult daily life prevented him from fully developing his literary ambitions. However, the relatively small body of work he left behind shows that he was a distinctive and refined master of fantasy writing.
For this reason, his influence on 20th-century fantasy literature is significant. Among the works published in this series are The Great God Pan, The Novel of the Black Seal, and The Terror.
In our time, Stephen King, the master of horror fiction, described it as the greatest horror story ever written in the English language.
The volume contains a representative selection of Arthur Machen’s other horror stories, such as “The Bowmen”, which gave birth to the famous legend of the Angels of Mons during the battle of the same name in World War I, or “The Shining Pyramid”, one of J.L. Borges’ favorite fantasy stories.