Tales of Horror and the Supernatural

For those who have never read Machen, you are in for a treat. Machen was an accomplished writer of supernatural tales with an unusually powerful and original imagination. The premise on which he based many of his most chilling tales--that of the survival of an aboriginal European population worshipping chthonic fertility deities--was later made famous as a historical thesis by Margaret Murray in "The God of the Witches". I don't know how much value this idea has as a scholarly premise, but Machen thought of it decades before Murray, and used it as the understated background in some his best stories, such as "The White People". However, Machen was much more than a purveyor of scary stories; he was a well rounded, sociable man with a strong mystical streak. These personal qualities manifest themselves in his writing through a quiet humor and muted, but powerful, sense of the numinous. Unlike many of the writers of supernatural and fantasy fiction who followed and were indebted to him, (Dunsany, Cabell, Lovecraft are but a few) Machen seems to have thought that the horrors he wrote about were only the shadow side of some more powerful and greater goodness. This strong but undogmatic faith gives Machen's work a unique feeling of wonder and mystery. Even George MacDonald's Christian fantasies lack the freshness and sense of possibility found in Machen's best work. This book, along with most of Machen's other writings, is a satisfying and complex read.