Not only is Arthur Machen remembered for his supernatural war story about Anglo-Saxon archers, "The Bowmen" (published in 1914 in The Evening News), and as an important influence on modern fantasy writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury, but also much of his writing expresses a wonderful vision of mystical union that is a foundation for the fantastic in literature. As Machen recollects in Beneath the Barley (1931), he experienced an early moment of insight, just before beginning the poem Eleusinia (1881), in which he sensed that there exists a timeless and spiritual reality underneath what humans perceive in the material world. A major proportion of his large literary output was devoted to the skillful and repeated expression of this vision.

For one who grew up to believe in and to write about this mystical union of all things hidden beneath the surface of matter, Machen's date of birth...