Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (Arthur Llewellyn Jones) was born in 1863 in Caerleon on Usk, Wales, and died in 1947 in Buckinghamshire, England. From very young he moved to London for a living. He was a journalist, teacher, editor, translator, actor, narrator and restless continuation of the tradition of visionaries in English. One of his first books was called The Anatomy of Tobacco. He met fame and oblivion several times, at different stages of his life. In The Great God Pan story, appeared in 1894 and now considered a classic of fantasy literature, he got his first hit with audiences and critics. That period with gothic and decadent features are also the three impostors (Borges published in his personal library) and The Hill of Dreams. After more than a decade when he could not get it edited, he was reborn as a cult author in a circle of American critics, whose enthusiasm crossed the ocean and made him one of the most widely read and published writers of the time. He translated twelve volumes of memoirs of Giacomo Casanova. To recover from the death of his first wife, he explored endlessly the streets of London. He was a member of the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, without seriously involved, because he was more interested in following their own intuitions, which led him to research and write about the Celtic Christian Church, the Arthurian myth and legend of the Holy Grail. When he was about fifty years old, he joined the writing of the Evening News, which published a story on the participation of angels in an English battle of the First War that had for some readers.