Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 58 Pages Regular visitors to the blog will know that every now and then, I decide that I really need to read something of Arthur Machen's, buy a book and then promptly pop it on a bookshelf to be forgotten about/possibly given away. Well… I can confirm that I have finally read an Arthur Machen story and it’s the one that everyone knows about. I had to start somewhere and the cover for ‘Tales of Horror and the Supernatural’ pretty much demanded that I start there. As a child of the eighties (mostly), I’ve got a soft spot for cover art like this; take a look and tell me that you disagree. Some things really were better in the ‘old days’ ;o) Anyway… ‘The Great God Pan’ was originally published, as a novella, in 1894 and my copy can be found in the 1975 Panther edition of ‘Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (Volume 1)’. Honestly though, if you’re looking to read ‘The Great God Pan’ yourself, you’ll have absolutely no trouble finding it in print or as an eBook. It’s not ...

‘The Bowmen’ and ‘The Soldier’s Rest’ can be found in the collection ‘The White People and Other Weird Stories’. I’m always keen to read more ‘Weird Fiction’ as it appears to be a fairly loose definition taking in a lot of genres that perhaps didn’t have a name of their own back in the day. ‘This barbarian fellow fighting monsters in a made up world… bit weird isn’t it?’ 😉 Okay, maybe it didn’t work quite like that but it’s still interesting to see what got lumped in under ‘Weird’ because no-one really knew where to put it. I’d heard that Arthur Machen was a person to read more of, if you wanted to read Weird Fiction’, and as usual, it’s taken me a little while to get round to it but here I am 😊 And also as usual, I had no idea where to start so thought I’d go for a ‘little taster’ and tackle the two shortest stories, in the collection, first… Perhaps because of the limited space to work with (I believe these stories were originally published in newspapers?), ‘The Bowmen’ and ‘T...