The Angels of Mons

By Arthur Machen

'The Angels of Mons' is a short story by Arthur Machen based on a popular British legend - at the beginning of the First World War some soldiers claimed to have been aided by a supernatural force at the decisive moment in the Battle of Mons (1915). Machen creates a storyline that blends supernatural elements with patriotism, folk tales and urban legends. A must-read for fans of supernatural yet 'based on a true story' narratives.Jorge Luis Borges cited Machen as a great writer and an inspiration for the magical realism movement in literature. Notorious occultist Aleister Crowley also greatly admired Machen for effortlessly crossing over the threshold that separates reality and the magical realm. 'The Angels of Mons' is highly recommended for fans of the 'Good Omens' series inspired by Terry Pratchett's fiction and starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.es,schema,operations,editmeta,changelog,versionedRepresentations","id":"122243","self":"https://jira.sagaegmont.com/rest/api/latest/issue/122243","key":"SI-82285","fields":{"customfield_10040":"Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh writer of supernatural, fantasy, and horror novels. Before his literary career skyrocketed he also worked as a journalist and an actor. His major belief was that the ordinary and external world surreptitiously conceals something far more mysterious and bizarre. In turn, we are deeply interested in trying to lift the veil enshrouding the threshold separating the two. His most acclaimed works include the classic horror novella 'The Great God Pan' and the semi-autobiographical 'The Hill of Dreams'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAGA Egmont
• Release date: Mar 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9788726615296

Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh mystic and author. Born Arthur Llewellyn Jones, he was raised in Monmouthshire in a prominent family of clergymen. He developed an early interest in alchemy and other occult matters, and obtained a classical education at Hereford Cathedral School. He moved to London, where he failed to gain admittance to medical school and soon focused on his literary interests. Working as a tutor, he wrote in the evening and published his first poem, “Eleusinia,” in 1881. A novel, The Anatomy of Tobacco (1884), soon followed, launching his career as a professional writer. Machen made a name for himself as a frequent contributor to London literary magazines and achieved his first major success with the 1894 novella The Great God Pan. Following his wife’s death from cancer in 1899, he briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and began conducting research on Celtic Christianity, the legend of the Holy Grail, and the stories of King Arthur. In 1922, after a decade of working as a journalist for the Evening News, he published The Secret Glory—a story of the Grail—to popular and critical acclaim. This marked the highpoint of his career as a pioneering author of fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction whose work has been admired and praised by William Butler Yeats, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stephen King.

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Arthur Machen

The Angels of Mons

SAGA Egmont

The Angels of Mons

Cover image: Shutterstock

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ISBN: 9788726615296

1st ebook edition

Format: EPUB 3.0

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This work is republished as a historical document. It contains contemporary use of language.

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Introduction

I have been asked to write an introduction to the story of The Bowmen, on its publication in book form together with three other tales of similar fashion. And I hesitate. This affair of The Bowmen has been such an odd one from first to last, so many queer complications have entered into it, there have been so many and so divers currents and cross-currents of rumour and speculation concerning it, that I honestly do not know where to begin. I propose, then, to solve the difficulty by apologising for beginning at all.

For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced. If, for example, a man has made an anthology of great poetry, he may well write an introduction justifying his principle of selection, pointing out here and there, as the spirit moves him, high beauties and supreme excellencies, discoursing of the magnates and lords and princes of literature, whom he is merely serving as groom of the chamber. Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and classics of the world, to the great and ancient and accepted things; and I am here introducing a short, small story of my own which appeared in The Evening News about ten months ago.

I appreciate the absurdity, nay, the enormity of the position in all its grossness. And my excuse for these pages must be this: that though the story itself is nothing, it has yet had such odd and unforeseen consequences and adventures that the tale of them may possess some interest. And then, again, there are certain psychological morals to be drawn from the whole matter of the tale and its sequel of rumours and discussions that are not, I think, devoid of consequence; and so to begin at the beginning.

This was in last August, to be more precise, on the last Sunday of last August. There were terrible things to be read on that hot Sunday morning between meat and mass. It was in The Weekly Dispatch that I saw the awful account of the retreat from Mons. I no longer recollect the details; but I have not forgotten the impression that was then on my mind, I seemed to see a furnace of torment and death and agony and terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the British Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet aureoled