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 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".