Faunus 21

The latest editions of the Friends of Arthur Machen publications went out to members earlier this year. Faunus volume 21 a highly collectable hard bound journal contains Machen’s intriguing review of Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol from 1898. An excellent essay by Ken Faig Jnr discusses Machen’s mysterious first wife Amelia Hogg and her family background in India and other aspects of her life. Amy Hogg was Machen’s wife in the 1890s and he wrote most of his most famous works while living with her and it was her death in 1899 which marked a key moment in Machen’s life.

Machen has long been recognised as an important influence on modern horror, and also on fantastic writing in general. Now unlikely as it may seem at first glance Faunus reveals that a key creator of the modern thriller genre, John Buchan, was in his youth a Machen enthusiast and at least two of his earliest stories were heavily influenced by Machen. In a well written piece Peter Bell carefully draws out the interconnections between these two men and their work. Another interesting article written by Machen shows his acquaintance with contemporary American Literature and gives some interesting judgements on writers as varied as Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman.

Machenalia is dedicated to Machen’s fellow master of Supernatural Horror Algernon Blackwood and contains Machen’s glowing review of one of Blackwood’s most famous tales ‘The Wendigo’ plus other Blackwood rarities. Besides this it examines the curious case of The White Comrade, another story which like The Bowmen swept through the trenches of WW1 as a supposedly true tale. It also covers the surge in Machen translations in Portugal and some new radio documentaries on Machen. There is also a long feature on Dennis Wheatley and the terrifying mystery of the White Pumpkin.

Faunus 16 - Summer 2007 Collection of Machen letters

The Friends of Arthur Machen commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of Machen’s death and the centenary of the publication of The Hill of Dreams in 1907 with the first ever publication of "John Lane and Arthur Machen: A Correspondence" in Faunus The Journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen, volume 16 (Summer 2007). It covers Machen's correspondence with the important fin de siècle publisher John Lane from 1895-1906. The letters demonstrate Machen’s refusal to censor The Three Impostors in the aftermath of the Wilde trial despite Lane’s requests and Machen’s irritation with the puritanical climate of the time. Machen did agree however to the removal of one terrifying word from the manuscript now put into print for the first time ever. The letters also covers Machen’s difficulties in getting The Hill of Dreams published in the climate of the time, which although written 1896-7 was not published for ten years. Other articles in that issue include Machen scholar Roger Dobson discussing in "The Book in Yellow: How Dorian Inspired Lucian" the connection between Machen’s reading of Wilde’s Dorian Gray and The Hill of Dreams. Paul Fox’s article “On the Matter of Coincidence: 'Though' and 'Why' and 'The Inmost Light.'” discusses the place of that story in Machen's 1890s fiction, and in his ideas of aesthetics. In Machen's 1916 article "The Shade of a Great Man" published for the first time since the war Dr Johnson returns to pontificate to Boswell on the such matters as the Blackout, the coming of “fireships of the air” and Conscientious Objectors.

The most recent Machenalia the newsletter of the society covers the recently finished Caerleon sculpture commemorating Machen, a number of Machen based film scripts in development, more on the Angels of Mons, Machen themed music and in a special Tobacco themed issue reveals that Machen foretold the recent ban on smoking.