A collection of short nonfiction works by turn-of-the-century horror master Arthur Machen. He was the author of the bone-chilling The Great God Pan and other masterpieces of Celtic-twilight-terror fiction. These essays appeared in newspapers like The London Graphic, which are ultra-rare, making this book a must for the Machen collector. The general reader will also be charmed by the Welshman’s particular, bittersweet sense of all things bookishly antiquarian and his haunting nostalgia for a lost, pantheistic childhood. Somewhat less present are what we adore in Machen’s fiction—his talent for wringing preternatural chills from pre-Roman ruins and the not-so-dormant deities nearby. The new Machen reader seeking goose-bumps might do better to seek them in his stories “The Three Impostors,” “The Great God Pan” and others. Still, there is much in this treasure trove of arcana to delight any bibliophile. CS

Publisher: Tartarus
Hardback: 287 pages