What was the original publisher of The Great God Pan?
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What is now the first chapter of the novella was published in 1890 in a magazine called "The Whirlwind", while what is now the third chapter of the book was published in the same magazine the following year as a standalone short story called "The City of Resurrections". Machen only viewed the two works as connected after they were finished. Once he decided the two stories were connected, Machen wrote the rest of "The Great God Pan" in a single evening save for its final chapter. Machen did not think of an ending for the tale for months, and in that time believed that the novella would remain unfinished forever. The last chapter was completed in June 1891. Machen sent the novella to the publisher Blackwood, who rejected it, deeming it a clever story that "shrink[s]...from the central idea." It was accepted by John Lane and published in 1894. When published as a book, "The Great God Pan" was accompanied by another Machen tale called "The Inmost Light" which also features a mad scientist and elements of science fiction. The book's cover was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley.
The Great God Pan
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"The Great God Pan" implied sexuality caused a scandal upon its original release and hurt Machen's reputation as an author. Reviewing the novella for the magazine "Literary News", Richard Henry Stoddard criticised the story as "too morbid to be the production of a healthy mind". The art critic Harry Quilter's review of the book, titled "The Gospel of Intensity", and published in "The Contemporary Review" in June 1895, was even more harsh. Quilter declared: "The Great God Pan' is, I have no hesitation in saying, a perfectly abominable story, in which the author has spared no endeavor to suggest loathsomeness and horror which he describes as beyond the reach of words." Quilter warned that Machen's books were a dangerous threat to the entire British public and that they would destroy readers' sanities and senses of morality. Quilter went on to attack the story's publisher, John Lane, as well as Machen himself: "Why should he be allowed, for the sake of a few miserable pounds, to cast into our midst these monstrous creations of his diseased brain?" Quilter added that works of fiction like Machen's should be unanimously condemned by literary critics and newspapers: "If the Press was so disposed it could stamp out such art and fiction in a few months: And that disposition must be acquired, must even be enforced." He was particularly harsh in his denunciation of sexual ambiguity and polymorphous androgyny in the book. He expressed revulsion at Machen's description of Helen's sex changing immediately before her death and concluded his review with a comment of distaste regarding the "nasty little naked figure of dubious sex and humanity with which Mr. Aubrey Beardsley has prefaced the story". A positive appraisal of the novella came from Oscar Wilde, who called it "un succès fou."
The Great God Pan
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The Great God Pan is a horror and fantasy novella by Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Machen was inspired to write "The Great God Pan" by his experiences at the ruins of a pagan temple in Wales. What would become the first chapter of the novella was published in the magazine "The Whirlwind" in 1890. Machen later extended "The Great God Pan" and it was published as a book alongside another story, "The Inmost Light", in 1894. The novella begins with an experiment to allow a woman named Mary to see the supernatural world. This is followed by an account of a series of mysterious happenings and deaths over many years surrounding a woman named Helen Vaughan. At the end, the heroes confront Helen and force her to kill herself. She undergoes a series of supernatural transformations before dying and she is revealed to be the child of Mary and the god Pan.
The Great God Pan
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A pair of parodies of "Pan" were published in 1895 – Arthur Rickett's "A Yellow Creeper" and Arthur Sykes's "The Great Pan-Demon". Both suggest that Machen is an author of "limited imagination," with the latter depicting him as a mad scientist unleashing degenerate literature on an unsuspecting public. "The Great God Pan" was brought to the stage in 2008 by the WildClaw Theatre Company in Chicago. It was adapted and directed by WildClaw artistic director Charley Sherman. The novella "Helen's Story" (2013) by Rosanne Rabinowitz retells the story of "The Great God Pan" from Helen Vaughan's point of view. "Helen's Story" was written from a feminist perspective and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. "The Great God Pan" was adapted into a chamber opera by composer Ross Crean. Unusually for a composer, Crean wrote the opera's libretto himself. A recording of the work was released in 2017. The production saw its world premiere by Chicago Fringe Opera in 2018. According to the "Chicago Tribune" John von Rhein, Chicago Fringe Opera's staging of "The Great God Pan" portrays Helen Vaughan as both a symbol of gender equality and an evil "femme fatale".
The Great God Pan
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According to film historians Keith McDonald and Roger Clark, Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro's portrayal of the faun in his 2006 dark fantasy film "Pan's Labyrinth" was inspired by the "ambivalent and possibly dangerous" portrayals of Pan in late Victorian and early Edwardian novels, including Machen's "The Great God Pan" and "Pan's Garden" (1912) by Algernon Blackwood. Del Toro deliberately chose to imitate the darker, more sinister fauns of Machen and Blackwood rather than the "sweetly domesticated figure" of Mr. Tumnus from C. S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (1950). The original title of the film in Spanish is "El Laberinto del Fauno" ("The Labyrinth of the Faun"), but the English title "Pan's Labyrinth" emphasizes the connection between del Toro's film and the body of late nineteenth-century writings about Pan, including "The Great God Pan".
The Great God Pan
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Clark Ashton Smith was inspired by "The Great God Pan" to write his story "The Nameless Offspring" (1931), which also features a monstrous child born of a human and a supernatural entity. It has been suggested that Michael Arlen's novel "Hell! Said the Duchess" (1934) is a parody of "The Great God Pan", as Arlen was influenced by Machen's work. "The Great God Pan" influenced Peter Straub's novel "Ghost Story" (1979) in its depiction of a shapeshifting monster who terrifies those it encounters. Straub himself frequently credited "The Great God Pan" as having been a major influence on his work.
The Great God Pan
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Machen's literary reputation was re-evaluated in the 1920s and "The Great God Pan" has since attained the reputation of a horror masterpiece. In "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1926; revised 1933), H. P. Lovecraft praised the story, saying: "No one could begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph abounds"; he added that "the sensitive reader" reaches the end with "an appreciative shudder". Lovecraft also noted, however, that "melodrama is undeniably present, and coincidence is stretched to a length which appears absurd upon analysis". Bennett Cerf described the story as a "masterpiece". Brian Stableford stated that "The Great God Pan" is "the archetypal Decadent horror story" and described the story as "highly original". Stephen King referred to it as "one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language." King also praised "Pan" for being "more reader-friendly" than Lovecraft's fiction. "The Washington Post" Elizabeth Hand deemed it "one of the greatest supernatural tales ever written". "Black Gate" Matthew David Surridge said that "The Great God Pan" is "a fascinating, troubling story, and, for all its influence, not like much else than I can think of. It's not simple, and yet it's effective, more so than can easily be explained."
The Great God Pan
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This story had particular resonance with Victorian literary audiences. In 1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote her poem "The Dead Pan", an adaption of Plutarch's story which insisted that proper Christian literature should abandon Greek mythology, with each stanza ending in the words "Pan, Pan is dead." As a member of the Decadent movement, Machen sought to subvert traditional themes and transgress literary boundaries, an agenda which made Pan a particularly appealing figure. The title of "The Great God Pan" appears to have been specifically derived from the Browning's later poem "A Musical Instrument" (1862), in which the first line of every stanza ends with the words "the great god Pan". Machen's use of Pan in the novella may have also been influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson's essay "" (1878) and Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem "" (1894), in which Pan is portrayed as the "emblem of the delicious combination of ecstasy and terror."
The Great God Pan
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Stephen King wrote that his novella "N." from his story collection "Just After Sunset" (2008) is "a riff on Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan"... Mine isn't anywhere near [as] good [as the original], but I loved the chance to put neurotic behavior—obsessive/compulsive disorder—together with the idea of a monster-filled macroverse." King has also cited Machen's novella as an influence on his novel "Revival" (2014). Similar to "Pan", "Revival" features an experiment on a young woman's brain which allows her to see into another world.
The Great God Pan
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The Great House Of God: A Home for Your Heart is a Christian religious book written by Max Lucado and published by Word Publishing in 1997. Terry Burns of the "Pembroke Daily Observer" called "The Great House of God" "an excellent book on the Lord's Prayer". "The Christian Science Monitor" listed "The Great House of God" fifth on its quarterly list of hardcover religion bestsellers in December 1997. In a "Publishers Weekly" review, Henry Carrigan writes that, although the thoughts in the book "might be powerful in their spoken form, the brevity and the shallowness of their written form abandons readers in the foyer". In a "Booklist" article, Ray Olson compares the book to Philip Yancey's "What's So Amazing About Grace?", which was also published in 1997, and argues that, although Lucado and Yancey have each written several bestselling Christian books, Yancey's book is better edited.
The Great House of God