SOURCE: An introduction to Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen, Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, pp. vxvi.

Stern is an American editor, historian, and author. In the following essay, he provides an overview of Machen's fiction.

Most of the stories in this book [Tales of Horror and the Supernatural] were written forty or fifty years ago. Arthur Machen had a long career; he was born in 1863 and lived until December 15, 1947, but he did his best work while he was still fairly young. Carl Van Vechten and Vincent Starrett introduced his work to the American public in the twenties, and for a brief while he became an author whom it was fashionable to read. His yellow-bound volumes with their purple labels were then to be seen everywhere; now they are almost impossible to obtain, for they are all out of print, and when one of them does come...