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
In a review of the novella for "Black Gate", Matthew David Surridge hypothesized that Machen took inspiration from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818) in his portrayal of Dr. Raymond as a mad scientist akin to Victor Frankenstein. The works of Robert Louis Stevenson, especially his 1886 novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", were among Machen's most significant influences when writing "The Great God Pan". Critic John Gawsworth also sees Machen's novella as reminiscent of the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu. Aaron Worth noted similitude between the death of Helen Vaughan and the theories of alchemist Thomas Vaughan, who is the character's namesake and Helen's disintegration recalls the alchemical concept of the prima materia. John C. Tibbetts observes similarities between Helen Vaughan and Ayesha, the sexually liberated demonic priestess from H. Rider Haggard's "" (1886). Machen wrote that several critics felt that Joris-Karl Huysmans's novels "À rebours" (1884) and "Là-bas" (1891) had inspired "The Great God Pan", though he did not read either book until after "Pan" was published. Upon reading the two novels, Machen concluded that "my critics had not read them either."