The Great God Pan (The Library of Wales)

The Great God Pan (The Library of Wales)

by Arthur Machen (Author)

Synopsis

An experiment into the sources of the human brain through the mind of a young woman has gone horribly wrong. She has seen the great god Pan and will die giving birth to a daughter. Twenty years later feted society hostess Helen Vaughan becomes the source of much fevered speculation. Many men are infatuated with her beauty, but great beauty has a price, sometimes you have to pay with the only thing you have left. The Great God Pan was a sensation when first published in 1894. Its author, Arthur Machen, was a struggling unknown writer living in London. He had translated Casanova's memoirs and was living on a small inheritance. He immediately became one of the most talked-about writers of the last years of the nineteenth century, while the publication marked the start of his ongoing influence on modern fantasy and horror. Machen's dark imaginings of the reality behind ancient beliefs feature again in the acclaimed, mesmerising short story 'The White People' and the curious tale 'The Shining Pyramid', also in this volume.

$11.54

Quantity

3 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 120
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 01 Jun 2010

ISBN 10: 1906998167
ISBN 13: 9781906998165

Media Reviews
'One of the greatest horror stories ever written.' Stephen King 'Machen is a genius right enough but I won't take him to bed with me again.' Arthur Conan Doyle 'Arthur Machen...is a mystic, who knew that there exists a threshold which, if it is stepped over, will show us a subtly altered reality.' Clive Barker 'For ability to create an atmosphere of nameless terror I can think of no author living or dead who comes near to him.' Jerome K. Jerome
Author Bio
Born and brought up in Monmouthshire, Machen's tales of bohemian 'fin-de-siecle' London were coloured by the dark and mysterious landscapes of his childhood. A contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats - all of whom admired his work tremendously, Machen's legacy is central to gothic fiction in the twentieth century. His great literary significance was recognized by H. P. Lovecraft who named Machen as one of the four 'modern masters' of supernatural horror.