A writer whose unique vision of his Gwent homeland has terrified and inspired readers across the world.
Gwilym Games tells us more...
Born in Caerleon he was the son of a local clergyman.
His early years wandering Gwent and its landscape remained a vital influence throughout his life. He attended Hereford Cathedral School, but family poverty ruled out university.
Going to London, Machen lived in poverty and took various jobs to fund his writing including cataloguing occult books and writing the first English translation of Casanova's autobiography.
It was in 1894 that Machen made his name by publishing The Great God Pan, his first horror story which attracted much controversy for its combination of dark sexual overtones, mystical wonders and ancient horrors haunting Wales and London.
It has attracted a cult following ever since, including Stephen King, who named it one of his ten all-time favorite horror stories.
Machen followed with another classic of urban gothic The Three Impostors, which featured sinister Welsh faery lore. After 1895 the Oscar Wilde scandal meant Machen's decadent works could not be published.
He wrote on, writing many of his most acclaimed works like The Hill of Dreams, and The White People, said to be amongst the best supernatural short stories in English.
The death of his first wife in 1899 stopped Machen writing and he became an actor, then a journalist. Around 1907 Machen studied the Holy Grail legends, forming a theory which linked it with the Celtic Church of his beloved Welsh saints. He wrote stories that brought the Holy Grail into modern life, an original plotline used later by many other authors.
One of his Grail stories, The Great Return, has the holy vessel cause a series of visions and miracles on the Pembrokeshire coast near Tenby.
In 1914 Machen inspired by the Retreat from Mons wrote the story The Bowmen, a patriotic tale in which ghostly archers from Agincourt returned to aid the British against the Germans.
In 1915 rumours circulated the story was based on true events, inspiring the much talked about myth of the Angels of Mons, supernatural proof that God supported the allies. Machen, though a fervent patriot, regarded these stories as nonsense and said so, starting a debate that continues today.
In 1916 Machen wrote The Terror, a novella that pioneered a new sub-genre in horror, that of mass animal attacks on humanity. Machen's work enjoyed a revival in Jazz Age America, inspiring fans who used his ideas in their stories, like HP Lovecraft, the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, and Robert E Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian.
Machen saw little money from any of his work, retiring to live in Amersham, Buckinghamshire in 1929. A public appeal in 1943 to support him financially was backed by many notables including TS Eliot, George Bernard Shaw, John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman and Siegfried Sassoon as well as the Mayor of Newport, and the head of Monmouthshire County Council.
Machen's much anthologized and translated stories continue to enthrall readers and writers today.
A plaque on the house next door to the Priory Hotel in Caerleon commemorates the building as his birthplace.
Influential horror writer
