The White People and Other Weird Stories
by Arthur Machen
Classic tales of the fantastic, creepy and weird, with a foreword from the award-winning director Guillermo Del Toro
With an introduction from S.T. Joshi, editor of American Supernatural Tales, The White People and Other Weird Stories is the perfect introduction to the father of weird fiction. The title story "The White People" is an exercise in the bizarre, leaving the reader disoriented and on edge. From the first page, Arthur Machen turns even fundamental truths upside-down, as his character Ambrose explains, "there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed'" setting the stage for a tale entirely without logic.
In this collection of Machen's most renowned works, readers will be transported to eerie, otherworldly landscapes where ancient legends and occult forces come to life. From the spine-tingling horror of "The Great God Pan" to the dreamlike fantasy of "The White People," Machen's tales are sure to delight fans of the supernatural, the weird, and the macabre.
This book includes some of Machen's most beloved stories, such as "The Red Hand," "The Hill of Dreams," and "The Novel of the Black Seal," as well as lesser-known gems that are sure to become favourites. Whether you're a longtime fan or a newcomer to Machen's work, this collection is a must-read for anyone who loves spine-tingling tales of horror and the supernatural.
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Guillermo del Toro: The Ecstasy of St. Arthur
Introduction by S.T. Joshi
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Texts
The Inmost Light
Novel of the Black Seal
Novel of the White Powder
The Red Hand
The White People
A Fragment of Life
The Bowmen
The Soldiers' Rest
The Great Return
Out of the Earth
The Terror
Explanatory Notes
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Paperback Edition
416 pages. Printed card cover.
ISBN: 9780143105596
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“Of living creatures of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if any can hope to equal the versatile Arthur Manchen, author of some dozen tales long and short, in which the elements of hidden horror and brooding fright attain an almost incomparable substance and realistic acuteness.”
H.P. Lovecraft
“…The typical Machen story is a terrific thing, although the terror that his first readers might have felt will have matured, a century after composition, into something approaching cosiness. A couple of late-Victorian gentlemen, one sceptical, another not so much, will debate whether there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and then a weird story will be told, invoking ancient, obscure rites, the forgotten peoples of the earth, and a depraved and ancient sexuality… ‘The White People’, from 1899, is so full of suggestive scenery (a young girl clambering through thickets and bubbling streams to find a strange landscape of hollows and mounds, where she will – we infer – be impregnated by the Fair Folk) that you wonder whether he and Freud had been corresponding.”
The Guardian - read the full review here
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About the Author
Arthur Machen is the nom de plume of the late Arthur Llewellyn Jones (1863 - 1947), 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.
Machen’s work was deeply influenced by his childhood in Wales and his readings in the occult and metaphysics. As a child he encountered the findings of local archaeologists, who in the 1870s were digging up strange pagan sculptures and inscribed stones dating from the Roman occupation of the region. His grandfather, a local clergyman, had found Roman inscriptions and carvings in his own churchyard at Caerleon, and the young Machen’s imagination was captured early on in his life by the sense that the ground itself was haunted with a tangible and pagan strangeness. This sense of archaic survivals and suggestive inscriptions and remnants inflected all of his stories of the weird and occult. The temple of the Romano-British god Nodens was excavated at Lydney Park close to where Machen spent his boyhood years, and it is notable that this "Celtic" deity urns up in some of his most memorable horror fiction.
