Arthur Llewellyn Jones (3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947), known by his pen name Arthur Machen ( or ), was a Welsh author and mystic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan (1890; 1894) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror; Stephen King described it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language." He is also known for "The Bowmen", a short story that was widely read as fact, creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.
Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Caerleon, Monmouthshire. The house of his birth, opposite the Olde Bull Inn in The Square at Caerleon is marked with a commemorative blue plaque. The landscape of Monmouthshire (which he usually referred to by the name of the medieval Welsh kingdom, Gwent), with its associations of Celtic, Roman, and medieval history, made a powerful impression on him, and his love of it is at the heart of many of his works.
Machen was descended from a long line of clergymen, the family having originated in Carmarthenshire. In 1864, when Machen was two, his father, John Edward Jones, became rector of the parish of Llanddewi Fach with Llandegveth, about five miles north of Caerleon, and Machen was brought up at the rectory there. Jones had adopted his wife's maiden name, Machen, to inherit a legacy, legally becoming "Jones-Machen"; his son later used a shortened version, Arthur Machen, as a pen name.
The Welsh historian and folklorist Fred Hando suggests Machen's early interest in the occult came from an article on alchemy in a volume of Household Words in his father's library. Hando recounts Machen's other early reading:
He bought De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater at Pontypool Road Railway Station, The Arabian Nights at Hereford Railway Station, and borrowed Don Quixote from Mrs. Gwyn, of Llanfrechfa Rectory. In his father's library he found also the Waverley novels, a three-volume edition of the Glossary of Gothic Architecture, and an early volume of Tennyson.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received a good education. His family could not afford for him to attend university, and Machen went to London, where he sat, but failed, exams for entrance to medical school. He displayed some literary promise and in 1881 published a long poem on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. He attempted to make a living as a journalist, a publisher's clerk, and a children's tutor, devoting his evenings to writing and solitary walks.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova.
In 1887, the year his father died, Machen married Amelia (Amy) Hogg, an unconventional music teacher with a passion for the theatre, who had literary friends in London's bohemian circles. Hogg had introduced Machen to the writer and occultist A. E. Waite, who was to become one of Machen's closest friends. Machen also made the acquaintance of other literary figures, such as M. P. Shiel and Edgar Jepson. Soon after his marriage, Machen began to receive a series of legacies from Scottish relatives that allowed him to gradually devote more time to writing.
Literary decadence in the 1890s
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and consequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his most highly regarded works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story "The White People", and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
In 1899 Machen's wife, Amy, died of cancer after a long period of illness. This had a devastating effect on Machen. He only gradually recovered from his loss over the next year, partially through his close friendship with Waite. It was through Waite's influence that Machen joined at this time the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, though Machen's interest in the organisation was not lasting or very deep.
Machen's recovery was further helped by his sudden change of career, becoming an actor in 1901 and a member of Frank Benson's company of travelling players, a profession which took him round the country.
This led in 1903 to a second marriage, to Dorothie Purefoy Hudleston, which brought Machen much happiness. Machen managed to find a publisher in 1902 for his earlier written work Hieroglyphics, an analysis of the nature of literature, which concluded that true literature must convey "ecstasy". In 1906 Machen's literary career began once more to flourish as the book The House of Souls collected his most notable works of the nineties and brought them to a new audience. He also published a satirical work, Dr Stiggins: His Views and Principles, generally considered one of his weakest works.
Machen also was at this time investigating Celtic Christianity, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. Publishing his views in Lord Alfred Douglas's The Academy, for which he wrote regularly, Machen concluded that the legends of the Grail actually were based on dim recollections of the rites of the Celtic Church. These ideas also featured strongly in the novel The Secret Glory which he wrote at this time, marking the first use in fiction of the idea of the Grail's surviving into modern times in some form, an idea much utilised ever since, as by Charles Williams (War in Heaven), Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) and George Lucas (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). In 1907 The Hill of Dreams, generally considered Machen's masterpiece, was finally published, though it was not recognised much at the time.
The next few years saw Machen continue with acting in various companies and with journalistic work, but he was finding it increasingly hard to earn a living and his legacies were long exhausted. Machen was also attending literary gatherings such as the New Bohemians and the Square Club.
Journalism and the Great War: 1910–1921
Finally Machen accepted a full-time journalist's job at Alfred Harmsworth's Evening News in 1910. In February 1912 his son Hilary was born, followed by a daughter, Janet, in 1917. The coming of the First World War in 1914 saw Machen return to public prominence for the first time in twenty years due to the publication of "The Bowmen" and the subsequent publicity surrounding the "Angels of Mons" episode. He published a series of stories capitalising on this success, most of which were morale-boosting propaganda, but the most notable, "The Great Return" (1915) and the novella The Terror (1917), were more accomplished. He also published a series of autobiographical articles during the war, later reprinted in book form as Far Off Things. During the war years Machen also met and championed the work of Caradoc Evans.