Tales of Horror & the Supernatural by Arthur Machen [1971 PAPERBACK]

Tales of Horror & the Supernatural by Arthur Machen [VOLUME ONE]

FIRST PINNACLE PRINTING [1971] PINNACLE HORROR

Vintage paperback in very good condition. Light wear and some tanning.   Perfect reading copy. 

Includes: The Terror. The Great God Pan. The White People. Fourteen Stories! Over 500 pages.

From the beginning of his literary career, Machen espoused a mystical belief that the humdrum ordinary world hid a more mysterious and strange world beyond. His gothic and decadent works of the 1890s concluded that the lifting of this veil could lead to madness, sex, or death, and usually a combination of all three. Machen's later works became somewhat less obviously full of gothic trappings, but for him investigations into mysteries invariably resulted in life-changing transformation and sacrifice. Machen loved the medieval world view because he felt it combined deep spirituality alongside a rambunctious earthiness.

Machen's strong opposition to a materialistic viewpoint is obvious in many of his works, marking him as part of neo-romanticism. He was deeply suspicious of science, materialism, commerce, and Puritanism, all of which were anathema to Machen's conservative, bohemian, mystical, and ritualistic temperament.