SOURCE: "Arthur Machen among the Arthurians," in Minor British Novelists, edited by Charles Alva Hoyt, Southern Illinois University Press, 1967, pp. 109-20.

In the essay below, Nash analyzes Arthurian elements in Machen 's The Great Return and contends that the short novel also contains themes characteristic of Machen 's supernatural tales.

Arthur Machen, in his own words "the descendant of a long line of Welsh priests," has been classed by a modern scholar with the twentieth-century Arthurians, Charles Williams, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis and T. H. White. He was born at Caerleon-upon-Usk and was acquainted from his earliest years with Welsh landscape and folklore. In addition to becoming acquainted with Tennyson, Spenser, and Malory, he was early trained in medieval lore, spending some time in the British Museum searching out and studying French manuscripts in preparation for a series of articles for the Academy on the subject...