The House of Souls

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Pages: 155

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About this book

Ordinary London streets and half remembered woodland wonders meet in Arthur Machen's collection of four supernatural tales. The contents bring together A Fragment of Life, The White People, The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light. In his introduction, Machen traces his move from writing in antique styles to newspaper essays and short fiction. He also explains how suburban routines, a Welsh ancestral house and an aimless walk across London helped shape his ideas for A Fragment of Life.

In The White People, a narrator lies awake after an unsettling experience, trying to separate remembered stories from something apparently seen in a secret wood. Moonlight, shadowed gardens and a nurse's fairy tales make familiar surroundings feel uncertain. Readers interested in the craft of supernatural fiction can compare this intimate voice of wonder and fear with Machen's account of finding material in everyday places.

About the author

Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (1863 to 1947) was a Welsh writer whose supernatural stories are landmarks of weird fiction. Working in obscurity for much of his life, he came to be recognised as one of the great masters of horror and the uncanny.