Quote:“His first novel, The Great God Pan, appeared in 1894…Machen’s debut concerns a working-class waif named Mary and her wealthy benefactor, who grooms her to become a guinea pig in a grotesque early experiment in brain surgery. Under the scalpel, she experiences a vision of the vast and formless deity of nature, only to awaken as a drooling idiot. She is found to be pregnant and, before dying, gives birth to a daughter who matures into a beautiful, voraciously seductive avatar of chaos, a pagan antichrist who proceeds to cut a vengeful swathe through stuffy fin-de-siecle London…Turning to the occult for solace, he was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn on November 21, 1899, taking the name Frater Avallanius…”