A Reader of Curious Books: Early Work from the Pages of Walford's Antiquarian Magazine

The work displayed in A Reader of Curious Books paints an intellectual portrait of Arthur Machen as a young man. All of the writer's future themes and favorite subjects can be found in its pages: Christian history and liturgy, folklore, early man, the history of world literature, psychic phenomenon, orthodoxy versus heresy-to name only a few.

For the certified bibliophile, a lover of literary exploration or the merely curious, a collection of this sort justifies itself. The archaic dispatches are both entertaining for the quality of the prose and interesting for the array of arcane subjects covered. The forgotten books reviewed in this collection become living characters with each title owing its existence to the simple suggestion that it does exist. In a sense, this lost bookshelf functions best as does the library of Don Quijote-a dusty chamber of the possibly dangerous, perhaps banal books which feed the imagination of man... that mad mammal.

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) charted a lonely and curious course through literature. Though never widely known, his work in horror fiction has gained him an appreciation from a small circle of admirers over the years. Yet, as adept as he may have been in creating tales of horror, a careful study of his body of work illustrates there is more to explore and discover about the Welsh writer. At times, one finds a brilliant essayist or a pragmatic journalist, a gifted storyteller of mystery and fantasy, or a Christian apologist. Despite this breadth, Machen worked in an idiosyncratic style and kept doggedly to the theme which concerned him most: ecstasy as the highest purpose of art and that which is most beneficial to Man.

Christopher Tompkins is an independent researcher and owner of Darkly Bright Press.