A Reader of Curious Books

010 A Reader of Curious Books by Arthur Machen

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Expanded Second Edition:

Darkly Bright Press presents a collection of rare material from the pen of Arthur Machen— previously unavailable since its original publication for the Walford’s Antiquarian Magazine in 1887.

The work displayed in A Reader of Curious Books paints an intellectual portrait of Machen as a young man. All of the writer’s future themes and favorite subjects can be found in its pages: Christian history and liturgy, folklore, early man, the history of world literature, psychic phenomenon, orthodoxy versus heresy—to name only a few.

For the certified bibliophile, a lover of literary exploration or the merely curious, a collection of this sort justifies itself. The archaic dispatches are both entertaining for the quality of the prose and interesting for the array of arcane subjects covered. The forgotten books reviewed in this collection become living characters with each title owing its existence to the simple suggestion that it does exist. In a sense, this lost bookshelf functions best as does the library of Don Quijote—a dusty chamber of the possibly dangerous, perhaps banal books which feed the imagination of man… that mad mammal. This new expanded edition includes additional contributions by Machen to Collectanea and the debut of selections from News and Notes.

Dear International Customers, please contact us for shipping rates for hardcovers to your country: info@darklybrightpress.com. For softcover purchase, see below.

August 2023
5.5 x 8.5 Hardcover with Linen Wrap, 150 Pages
Limited to 25 numbered copies
ISBN: 979-8-9863904-7-5
$35 + Postage (OUT-OF-PRINT