The House of Knopf, however, seems remarkably disinterested in its valuable property, and a valuable property it is, for not only did the series include almost all of the best of Machen, but almost every volume contained a preface or a foreword written especially for these editions by Mr. Machen. These comparatively recent Machen items are worth a volume of their own, a proposition warmly advanced by Mr. Joseph Vodrey but received coolly enough, thus far at least, by Mr. Knopf.
2
Machen had first appeared in print in America in 1894 when Roberts of Boston published The Great God Pan. There were several other Machen items published in this country prior to the Twenties. Dana Estes brought out The Hill of Dreams and The House of Souls not long after the Richards editions and in similar format. Putnam published The Bowmen in 1915 while the controversy over the legend was still raging. There were a few others, but the Machen boom was still to come. Mr. Cabell’s tribute to Machen in Beyond Life, published a few years later, undoubtedly did much to create a body of readers eager for Machen.
Just how and when Mr. Alfred Knopf became interested in Machen as a literary property I do not know, one does not with impunity ask publishers why they seek out certain authors. Certainly Mr. Knopf was of the opinion that the Twenties was ripe for Machen—anyone who remembers that era would, even today, vindicate Mr. Knopf’s judgment. Yet somehow, Machen did not catch on as well as might have been expected. Or perhaps he did—for the Twenties. For this was certainly a prolific period, genius was hailed weekly and books sold by the thousands. Perhaps Machen’s books did sell quite well by the standards of the Twenties. The Knopf printings seem to have been exhausted within a remarkably short time and very rapidly disappeared from book stores until their reappearance on second-hand stalls in the Thirties. Arthur Machen is not remembered too well as one who was popular in the Twenties, but then all too few of the writers of the Twenties are remembered at all.
Who were they? Critics and commentators of the times hailed book after book, they acclaimed name after name—but most of those names are seldom mentioned in the current revival of interest in the Twenties. The “best seller” lists of the day hardly indicate that John Dos Passos, Cabell, Van Vechten, etc., etc., were what all America was reading. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis and one or two others are notable exceptions, but the real best-sellers of the time would sound unfamiliar even to students of that era. Most people were reading The Sheik, If Winter Comes, Black Oxen, The Green Hat and So Big. Zane Grey and Ibanez were more widely read than Sinclair Lewis, even though Main Street had created a stir. There were outlines of history and of philosophy and even the “art” of thinking was popularized. There were books about China and Africa and India—and some of them even became the centers of controversy. Storms raged over books whose very titles are unremembered today, while the books we now consider “typical” of the Twenties sold slowly—and in small editions. One discovers that Eleanor Wylie, Ellen Glasgow, Floyd Dell, E. E. Cummings and most of the others who, even though they were hailed on alternate Tuesdays and Sundays as “new stars of great magnitude in the literary firmament,” were not too widely read, despite the assistance some of them received from the newly formed book clubs. Nor are they recalled nowadays with even fond recollection by very many. It is, therefore, not surprising that Arthur Machen remains one of the more obscure writers of the American Twenties, as well as of the English Nineties.
Interest in Arthur Machen was stirring even before the Twenties, but it was principally among writers and literary people. James Branch Cabell, whose Beyond Life was first published in 1919, was perhaps the first to mention in print the name of Arthur Machen and something of his work. In one of his lengthy monologues, speaking through the amiable and erudite Charteris, he says, “I wonder if you are familiar with that uncanny genius whom the London directory prosaically lists as Arthur Machen? If so, you may remember that in his maddening volume Hieroglyphics Mr. Machen circumvolantly approaches to the doctrine I have just voiced—that all enduring art must be an allegory. No doubt, he does not word this axiom quite explicitly: but then Mr. Machen very rarely expresses outright that which his wizardry suggests.”
It was about this time that Starrett discovered Arthur Machen, perhaps through Cabell whose work he was among the first to praise. Starrett it was, along with Paul Jordan-Smith, who tried to popularize Arthur Machen even before the famous Knopf “yellow books” were issued. A small group gathered about Starrett and Jordan-Smith to try to prove to publishers that Machen was important and that his books were being collected. In 1919 Smith wrote to several publishers about Machen, but they were not interested. The group then made every effort to have Machen’s first editions rise from nothing to ridiculous heights.
They succeeded all too well in this, for as Jordan-Smith says, “There were only a few of us then, but we seemed to be many, for we were bidding against one another in a hundred shops all over Britain. We did not expect the publishers to enter the rare book field. We merely wanted them to publish new books and reprint old ones by Machen. Instead they made limited editions and spoiled the whole business.”
Mr. Starrett, who is one of the most enthusiastic of Machen’s admirers, finally did something about it on his own. In 1923 he published, with his friend Covici, a collection of Arthur Machen’s stories and essays under the title The Shining Pyramid. This book was published in an edition limited to 875 copies. It contained, besides the title story, a number of pieces that had not previously been published in book form, and many of which have not since been reprinted. This is one of the better collections of Machen material which deserves reprinting today. In the following year Starrett published another collection under the title The Glorious Mystery. This, too, contained much new material and much that has not appeared elsewhere.
At the same time, perhaps even before Starrett was preparing to publish his collections, Alfred Knopf became interested in Arthur Machen and wrote him with an offer to publish anything of his he could find. Apparently Knopf’s negotiations coincided, in point of time at any rate, with Starrett’s plans. In 1925 Machen published in London a collection called The Shining Pyramid. The book was published simultaneously in New York by Alfred Knopf. It contained an introduction in which Machen wrote: “The Shining Pyramid is the result of a collaboration. Two years ago an American man of letters, full of industry, rummaged in old papers, magazines and manuscripts owing their origin to me, and produced as a result of his labors a volume published at Chicago, called The Shining Pyramid. The American gentleman, I may say, did not disturb my peace by consulting me as to the content of the book in question. Then, in 1924, pleased, I suppose, with the results of his toils, he rummaged a little more, and, using the same methods, produced a second volume of scraps and odds and ends from my workshop. This book he entitled The Glorious Mystery.”