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In Praise of Minor Writers

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A Collection of Books by Arthur Machen (1863-1947)

Even if you have not read all the famous books by the universally acknowledged great writers, it is fun to root around the work of more minor writers. Such a one is Arthur Machen, born Arthur Llewellyn Jones in Caerleon-on-Usk in Wales. He is probably best known for his early horror stories, particularly The Great God Pan (1894), The Three Impostors (1895), and The Hill of Dreams (1907). You can read these with great enjoyment, but then, too, there are his essays, such as Dog and Duck (1924); his translations, such as The Memoirs of Casanova; and his three-part autobiography.

I have always found that if you cast your net widely, you will come up with a whole slew of interesting writers—and these will inevitably direct you to other works worth reading.

In addition to Arthur Machen, here are some of my other favorite minor British writers:

  • G. K. Chesterton is one of my favorite writers … period … for his novels, short stories, essays, and poems
  • Hilaire Belloc, friend of Chesterton, was born in France and wrote in a number of genres
  • Ernest Bramah, a tea merchant, author of stories starring the blind detective Max Carrados and the Chinese sage Kai Lung
  • Arthur Morrison wrote great mysteries and a very Dickensian novel The Hole in the Wall
  • Some great horror writers: W. W. Jacobs (“The Monkey’s Paw”); M. R. James (Ghost Stories of an Antiquary); Algernon Blackwood (“The Willows”); and Oliver Onions (Widdershins)
  • Richard Austin Freeman, author of the Dr. Thorndyke detective stories

I see that all the above authors were either late Victorian or Edwardian writers. And I notice that the list could have been at least five times as long had I tried harder. But then, I always thought that it was too tempting to go overboard on lists: no more than six bulleted items is best.

The Halloween 2020 Book List

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A Canadian Adaptation of LeFanu’s Carmilla (2017)

Every October, I usually read several novels and short stories in the horror genre. I do not care that much for the current stuff, like Stephen King or Dean Koontz. My preference is for the classics, and those tend to be concentrated in the late 19th century.

The books I read this month were:

  • Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales
  • Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s In a Glass Darkly, which included the short novels Carmilla and The Room in the Dragon Volant
  • Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories, a new collection edited by Aaron Worthy

Shirley Jackson is most famous for her short story “The Lottery,” but she also wrote such novels as We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House.

Sheridan LeFanu (1814-1873) was an Irish author who wrote some classic tales of horror, especially Carmilla, a tale of a lesbian vampire who predated Bram Stoker’s Dracula by some twenty years. In 1960, it was made into a film by Roger Vadim entitled Blood and Roses (in France: Et mourir de plaisir). At the time I attended college, it was the most popular film showed by the Dartmouth Film Society.

Welsh Horror Tale Author Arthur Machen

Finally, there was a delightful collection of novellas and tales by Arthur Machen (1863-1947). Most of Machen’s best work was composed up to the late 1920s and included the classic The Great God Pan (1894), which tells of what happened when a young woman who, upon being exposed to the Greek god Pan, created a trail of destruction that spanned several continents.