The Great God Pan
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 Goddess: A Demon
"The Goddess: A Demon" was published in the wake of much other work by Marsh. "Manchester Weekly Times", a publication that had run a lot of his work, including Marsh's novella "The Woman with One Hand" in 1899, published it. The paper also published Marsh's “In Full Cry” (1899), “The Strange Fortune of Pollie Blythe: The Story of a Chinese ‘God’” (1900) and “The Man in the Glass Cage; or The Strange Story of the Twickenham Peerage" (1901). His name was so regular to the "Manchester Weekly Times" that they began to advertise his pieces once including a long paragraph about his work. His success is not far to seek. He brings to his work gifts of a very rare order; he is a delightfully unconventional writer, and tells a story in quite a unique way. Combining something of the sensationalism of Wilkie Collins with a humerous insight reminding one of Charles Dickens, his stile exhibits qualities which it owes to neither of these famous novelists, nor to any other. It is characterized by a peculiar directness and vigour which invest the narrative with fascinating interest. As for plot and incident, it is sufficient to say that in all Mr. Marsh’s stories the movement is very rapid, and the reader is hurried forward with breathless interest. "The Goddess: A Demon" was a highly anticipated periodical for Marsh and was a selling point of "Manchester Weekly Times".