Machen is the forgotten father of weird fiction

Arthur Machen
'Decadent horror' writer Arthur Machen. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images


These are not commodities to be piled high on three-for-two tables, but rarities which remain hidden unless sought out (hidden in this case in the dealers' room of the British Fantasy Convention). The stories hoarded in their pages are so little known you might be forgiven for wondering if you have dreamed them. The Triumph of Night and Other Tales by Edith Wharton. The Supernatural Tales of HG Wells. The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson. And dozens of other titles by authors both famous and obscure which taken as a whole form a secret library, a catalogue of weird fiction from its roots in Victorian Britain through to the modern day.

Perhaps the most significant but least well remembered of the Tartarus writers is the Welsh author of supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction Arthur Machen (1863-1947). Many contemporary authors of weird fiction will see their own struggles reflected in Machen's life and career. Born into the social hinterland between the privileged upper classes and the poverty of the working class, he received an excellent early education but lacked the money to attend university. Nonetheless he pursued a career as a writer, working as a journalist and tutor and writing through the night, hard work that led in his thirties to Machen establishing himself as an author of "decadent horror".

But this success would turn sour when his association with genre fiction made it impossible to find a publisher for his writing as it grew in sophistication, leading to much of his best work remaining unpublished for many years. By the turn of the century and following the death of his first wife Machen had abandoned fiction writing altogether. But his work continued to speak for itself, and his growing following led to a major resurgence in the 1920s and his return to writing.


Machen's writing may now be little read, but his influence lives on in other writers of weird fiction. HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos was heavily influenced by Machen, and through it Machen's ideas are at the heart of the modern horror genre and the work of writers like Clive Barker and Stephen King. British comic book writers of the 80s and 90s including Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman were also influenced by Machen in their own explorations of the supernatural and occult.

And novelist Graham Joyce, five-time winner of the British Fantasy Award, places his writing in the tradition of Machen and weird fiction. Joyce's stories illustrate the power of weird fiction to delve into the most primal aspects of life and find meaning there. That is why weird fiction in all its guises continues to fascinate us as readers today.