Things near & far by Arthur Machen
"Things near & far" by Arthur Machen is a memoir written in the early 20th century. It traces Machen’s path from his Welsh beginnings in Caerleon through lean years in London, early literary experiments, and a lifelong fascination with old books, occult byways, and the strange joys of city wandering. Blending reminiscence with sharp reflections on art, belief, and the grind of earning a living, it presents the author himself as the
central figure, moving between elegy, satire, and wonder. The opening of this memoir evokes a radiant vision of Caerleon and an imagined 1850s scene of two aunts meeting Machen’s father, before the tone turns elegiac with the family’s losses. It then shifts to the winter of 1884–85: odd jobs in London, deep country walks, and solitary work in a Strand garret cataloguing occult literature, which prompts skeptical, sometimes comic reflections on Theosophy, spiritualism, and the Kabbalah amid the atmosphere of old London. Returning to 1885, Machen describes nights of reading Hazlitt, Rabelais, and Balzac, a sudden resolve to write a “Great Romance,” and the frustration of having only prologues and epilogues with no plot, even as money and work run out—until a letter summons him home to his dying mother. Subsequent early chapters widen into meditations on why people write or play sports at all, the pains of finishing stories, the making of The Chronicle of Clemendy, and the meager rewards of literature. He recounts a comic “flea campaign” in Soho, a restorative trip to Touraine (measuring dream against reality in Rabelais’s country), and the discovery of an art of aimless London exploration that finds wonder in anonymous streets. Finally, he notes the small inheritances that kept him modestly comfortable, his distaste for luxury, and his resolve to keep writing despite everything. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Machen, Arthur, 1863-1947 |
|---|---|
| Title | Things near & far |
| Alternate Title | Things near and far |
| Original Publication | London: Martin Secker, 1923. |
| Credits | Carol Brown, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PR: Language and Literatures: English literature |
| Subject | Authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography |
| Subject | Machen, Arthur, 1863-1947 |
| Subject | Autobiography |
| Subject | Authors, Welsh -- 20th century -- Biography |
| Subject | Fantasy fiction -- Authorship |
| Subject | Horror tales -- Authorship |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78106 |
| Release Date | Mar 4, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5085 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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