"Flames from heaven were smitten... and every haggard writhing tree showed as black as midnight..."
The Hill of Dreams is one of the very greatest of weird horror stories ever committed to paper; a tale of a rector's son, Lucian Taylor, who wanders though the world questing for beauty among dreamscapes, via drugs and love.
By the estimate of many, it is considered Arthur Machen's masterwork.
Machen, arguably one of the greatest Welsh authors of all time, was also an essayist, journalist, Shakespearean actor, occultist (a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn along with Algernon Blackwood, William Butler Yeats, and Aleister Crowley, and a translator of Cassanova's Memoirs.
ARTHUR MACHEN (1863–1947) was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. His novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Stephen King called it "Perhaps the best horror story in the English language. He went on to say, "How many sleepless nights has The Great God Pan caused? God knows, but a few of them were mine." Machen's influence is not limited to genre fiction, however. Jorge Luis Borges recognized Machen as a great writer, and through him Machen has had an influence on magical realism.
'In the heady, hothouse era of Wilde and Beardsley, Machen's work was (another) blazing orchid..."
-Catherine Fisher
