The Great God Pan

The Great God Pan is a horror novella written by Welsh author Arthur Machen. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Machen’s story was only one of many at the time to focus on Pan as a useful symbol for the power of nature and paganism. Reviewing The Great God Pan for the magazine Literary News, Richard Henry Stoddard criticised the story as "too morbid to be the production of a healthy mind.” The story has since attained the reputation of a horror masterpiece. In Supernatural Horror in Literature, 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". Stephen King referred to it as