Stephen King declared that The Great God Pan was probably the best horror story in the English language. These macabre and chilling books were hugely influential, and remain so. The Great God Pan appeared in 1894, and The Three Imposters the following year. Over the next few years Machen's reputation grew steadily, although finances remained something of a problem. Two years later he was commissioned to translate The Hepthameron, a collection of stories by Margaret of Navarre, from the original French. He self-published a book, Eleusina - a common enough occurrence in those days - and moved to London where, in 1884, he produced The Anatomy Of Tobacco. He left school in 1880, already fascinated by writing and determined to make himself a career in literature. Their influence was so strong that he could, quite literally, tap into them for inspiration and atmosphere whenever he chose.Īrthur Machen was educated at Hereford Cathedral School but family finances were parlous and there was never any possibility of him going on to university. The area around the Rectory, with its rolling pastures and silent streams, combined with the looming mass of Wentwood and other mountain ridges - not to mention the historical past of Caerleon itself - gave him a literary landscape that would stay with Machen all his life.
"the older I grow the more firmly am I convinced that anything which I may have accomplished in literature is due to the fact that when my eyes were first opened in earliest childhood they had before them the vision of an enchanted land." As he wrote, in his lyrical autobiography Far Off Things: He quickly became fascinated by the beauty and the enchanting sense of mystery in the land that surrounded his childhood home. Most of Machen's childhood and adolescent days were spent at the Rectory in Llanddewi Fach, a few miles to the north of Caerleon. His son would, however, conveniently drop the Jones for all of his published work. Jones had married Janet Machen, taking her surname in order to claim an inheritance, adding Machen to his name and becoming the Rev.
John Edward Jones who in 1858 had become rector of Llanddewi Fach and Llandegveth. Born just seven years before the death of Charles Dickens, Machen came into the world at the house of his grandmother, just opposite the Olde Bull Inn and close to the Roman ampitheatre in Caerleon.
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