Tales of Horror and the Supernatural

What can you say about a collection of some of the best stories by a Master of the uncanny story? And a beautiful book beautifully produced by Tartarus Press. It's fat and has one of those little ribbon thingys in it. 'Nuff said.

One criticism I did have is it presented the Novel of the White Powder and the Novel of the Black Seal outside of [b:The Three Impostors|59397|The Three Impostors|Arthur Machen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348182135s/59397.jpg|1455448] framework. I know this happened with Machen's approval even during his life, but I always get the feeling the stories all ring as more uncanny and elegant when they are set in the Impostors framing story. IMHO.

There are a couple of dead ducks in here but they are show more short and every great author has a few duds. I'm not going to tell you which ones because you ought to read the whole book; no skipping. Why haven't you read this?

Lovecraft only wrote 17 great stories and heaven knows he had more than his share of really bad ones. show less

Machen is considered one of the great early horror writers, but he is usually too grim for my taste. I own this collection simply because I inherited it from my father. One curiosity in it is the story "the Bowmen" which is usually credited with inspiring the legend of the "Angels of Mons" in World War I --Machen wrote a fictional story about St George leading the bowmen of Agincourt to support the beleaguered British Expeditionary Force and eventually some people claimed they really had seen the bowmen in the sky. That is about the only cheerful story in the book.Another one may have contributed to Howard's vision of the Picts as small dark creatures surviving underground and taking terrible vengeance on their enemies.

The raison d'etre of these stories is not whether there is any factual basis for them which a reading of them might determine, but the savouring of the atmosphere conjured up by the admittedly old-fashioned writing skills of this author, who knows well his time and his place.

452. Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, by Arthur Machen (read 29 Nov 1952) On Nov 23, 1952, I said: "Machen stories are interesting but in cold reality one must admit they are silly. Unless I can get myself to accept his thesis that talk about 'little people' and elves and the like must have a factual basis--else why would people have ever talked of them?"