Arthur Machen
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, "The Great God Pan". It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and consequently sold well, going into a second edition.
The Great God Pan
"Black Gate" Matthew David Surridge said that "The Great God Pan" influenced Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897) as both works feature "an introductory sequence featuring a horrified Englishman in a non-English setting; then a variety of seemingly-unconnected events in London, the metropole at the heart of Empire; then the discovery that all those events are in fact inspired by one malign and supernatural intelligence, that the rational contemporary capital is threatened by the irrational and archaic; then an equivocal conclusion. The fear of sex, women, foreignness." John C. Tibbetts notes that both Helen Vaughan in "The Great God Pan" and Lucy Westenra in "Dracula" are "demon women of voracious and malignant sexuality". Theodora Goss also notes similarities between the death of Helen Vaughan in Machen's novella and Lucy's death in "Dracula". Tibbetts also notes that Machen's portrayal of Helen Vaughan as demonic and hyper-sexual may have influenced a similar character, The Woman of Songs, in Richard Marsh's "The Beetle" (1897).