SOURCE: "Arthur Machen's Supernaturalism: The Decadent Variety," in The University of Mississippi Studies in English, n.s. Vol. VIII, 1990, pp. 117-26.

In the following essay, Owens examines "The Great God Pan, " "The Inmost Light, " and "The Novel of the White Powder, " maintaining that the stories are influenced by the work of "decadent" writers of the 1890s.

The links are numerous between Arthur Machen and that rather ill-defined group of writers and artists in the 1890s known as "decadents." In 1894 John Lane at the Bodley Head published Machen's The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light in his Keynotes series, complete with an Aubrey Beardsley cover. Machen knew Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas; he dined with Wilde on several occasions and when critics characterized Machen's stories as "disgusting," "revolting," "loathsome," and "demoniac," Wilde congratulated him on the furor he had caused. The general public obviously associated Machen with...