In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle salutes the Welsh wizard of horror fiction
Arthur Machen (1863-1947) is one of those writers who seem destined to fall in and out of fashion. Having attained fame, swiftly followed by notoriety, in 1895 when his book The Three Impostors scandalised the London literary world with its account of debauched pagan rituals, Machen had to wait twelve years to get his next novel, The Hill of Dreams, published.