Arthur Machen was a hugely prolific essayist and journalist. In a career that spanned more than half a century, he wrote thousands of articles for such magazines and newspapers as the London Evening News, John O’London’s Weekly, and the Independent. In these essays he articulates his distinctive mystical and religiously based outlook. Accusing science and rationalism of impoverishing the human imagination, he was an untiring defender of the essential mystery of the cosmos.
In his literary criticism—embodied in the treatise Hieroglyphics (1902) and in many separate essays—Machen made a frequent discussion between mere “reading matter” and genuine literature. The former comprised mundane realism; the latter the world of romance, fantasy, and the supernatural. While being skeptical of spiritualist phenomena, he found in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, and other writers a vital expression of the wonders and terrors that humanity encounters even in everyday life.
This volume presents a robust selection of Machen’s essays, detailing his philosophical and literary vision. It is a significant adjunct to his weird fiction, showing how the principles he outlined in his essays were applied to the supernatural tales he wrote over his lifetime. The volume has been edited by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on Machen and the editor of Machen’s colleced fiction as published by Hippocampus Press
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Ι. Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature
II. Philosophy: First Principles
God’s Beasts
True Comfort
Preface to Afterglow
Man, the Mad Mammal
Farewell to Materialism
III. Literary Criticism: First Principles
American Letter
Aristotle and Art
The “Inhumanity” of Art
The Paradox of Literature
The Matter of Romance
Realism and Symbol
Science and Art
The Wonder from Wales
A Vision
Can We Trust Tradition?
Romance and Reality: An Introduction
IV. Books and Authors
A New War Poet
Jack London the Man
Le Morte Darthur
Poet and—Cockney
Introduction to A Handy Dickens
V. Fantasy, Horror, and the Occult
Review of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
Science and the Ghost Story
Folklore and of Legends of the North
The Literature of Occultism
Poe the Enchanter
The Black Art
Has Spiritualism Come to Stay?
An Ancient Mystery
Detective Stories and Real Life
The Line of Terror
The Other Side
The Fair Folk
Magic Still Flourishes
Introduction to Witches and Warlocks
Bibliography
Also published by Hippocampus Press:
Arthur Machen: Collected Fiction
Autobiographical Writings by Arthur Machen
The Secret Ceremonies: Critical Essays on Arthur Machen
This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 03 February, 2022.
