The House of Souls is a collection of supernatural and weird stories by Arthur Machen. It gathers tales that explore mystery, the uncanny and hidden dimensions beneath ordinary life, written in rich, suggestive prose. Listeners who enjoy atmospheric, unsettling fiction will find much to ponder here.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
The House of Souls By Arthur Machen Short Story Index Reprint Series AYER COMPANY PUBLISHERS, INC. NORTH STRATFORD, NH 03590 First Published 1922 Reprint Edition, 1999 AYER Company Publishers, Inc. Lower Mill Road North Stratford, NH 03590 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: 0-8369-3806-2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:
72-152947 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents A Fragment of Life 1 The White People 111 The Great God Pan 167 The Inmost Light 245 Introduction It was somewhere, I think, towards the autumn of the year 1889 that the thought occurred to me that I might perhaps try to write a little in the modern way. For, hitherto, I had been, as it were, wearing costume in literature. The rich, figured English of the earlier part of the seventeenth century had always had a peculiar attraction for me. I accustomed myself to write in it, to think in it; I kept a diary in that manner, and half-unconsciously dressed up my every day thoughts and common experiences in the habit of the Cavalier or of the Caroline Divine. Thus, when in 1884 I got a commission to translate the Heptameron, I wrote quite naturally in the language of my favourite period, and, as some critics declare, made my English version somewhat more antique and stiff than the original. And so "The Anatomy of Tobacco" was an exercise in the antique of a different kind; and "The Chronicle of Clemendy" was a volume of tales that tried their hardest to be mediæval; and the translation of the "Moyen de Parvenir" was still a thing in the ancient mode.
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