Arthur Machen

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.

Early years

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: