SOURCE: "Arthur Machen: The Mystery of the Universe," in The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft, University of Texas Press, 1990, pp. 12-41.

An American editor and critic, Joshi is the leading figure in the field of H. P. Lovecraft scholarship and criticism. As an editor, his publications include several volumes of Lovecraft's previously uncollected or unpublished works, critical editions of Lovecraft's major fiction, a collection of essays surveying Lovecraft's critical reputation, the journal Lovecraft Studies, and the definitive bibliography of Lovecraft's life and work as well as a full-length biographical and critical study. In the following excerpt, he evaluates Machen's reputation as a short fiction writer, concluding that his stories are a failed attempt to renounce "the modern world of science and naturalism. "

Arthur Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones at Caerleon-on-Usk, Wales, on March 3, 1863; he adopted his...