Resumen
Resumen de La casa de las almas
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Para quién es
This collection will please readers who love ghost stories told by candlelight, old London streets at night, and dread built through rumour, letters, and strange talk.
De qué trata este libro
What if the ordinary world is only a thin curtain, and something lives behind it? Arthur Machen spent his career asking that question, and The House of Souls gathers four of his answers.
The collection holds A Fragment of Life, The White People, The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light, written in the 1890s and just after. The first is a quiet story about a clerk and his wife. The other three are tales of horror, where scholars and doctors of Victorian London meet things no science can explain. You begin with the clerk, Edward Darnell, and ten pounds his wife Mary will not let him spend.
En este resumen
- 1A clerk and a wife argue over ten poundsFree
- 2A husband tells his wife about a secret walk
- 3A prologue on sin and a green book
- 4The girl, her nurse, and the wild country
- 5A surgeon opens a door to Pan
- 6A beggar's story and a dead man in a basement
- 7A face in a drawing and a house with bright curtains
- 8A rhyme on a scrap of paper leads to a jewel
- 9The hidden world lies just behind the ordinary
- 10Evil is lonely, and it hides in respectable people
- 11The tales are told through frames, letters and rumor
Idea clave 1 de 11
A clerk and a wife argue over ten pounds
Edward Darnell wakes from a dream of an ancient wood and a clear well. He is a clerk who has spent ten years tallying payment slips, and he lives in a new house in Shepherd's Bush with his wife Mary.
Aunt Marian has sent them a hundred pounds. They put ninety into a safe mine, and the last ten becomes the subject of endless talk. Edward wants to furnish the spare room. Mary listens with her eyes on some distant vision, and then she builds a case against it. Each answer ends with the same soft refrain, that they could never afford it.
Under all this, Edward hears his wife's voice as strange music, like a scholar facing a hieroglyph he cannot read.
A small, careful life can hide a great hunger.
That’s 1 of 11 key points.
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Who’s who
- Edward Darnell
- A City clerk in Shepherd's Bush who longs for the old wood and well of his dreams and the Welsh family he comes from.
- Mary Darnell
- Edward's careful wife, who guards the household money and listens, wide-eyed, when her husband speaks of hidden wonders.
- Ambrose
- A recluse who holds that sorcery and sanctity are the only realities, and who keeps a girl's green book of secrets.
- Dr Raymond
- A doctor of transcendental medicine who wants to lift the veil between worlds and see the god Pan.
- Clarke
- A cautious man who witnesses the experiment and keeps a private collection of memoirs on the devil.
- Villiers
- A curious London explorer who follows a beggar's tale and a sketch of a woman's face to the truth.
- Dyson
- A self-styled man of letters and student of London who hunts the meaning of a strange rhyme.
- Salisbury
- A practical, health-minded man who picks up a crumpled paper in a storm and cannot shake its rhyme.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 79,500 words
- Reading timeAbout 5 h 35 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 11 other languages
Questions about La casa de las almas
What is The House of Souls about?
It collects four tales by Arthur Machen. A Fragment of Life is a domestic story of a clerk and his wife, and the other three are horror stories about hidden worlds, the god Pan and a jewel with a terrible secret.
Which stories are in The House of Souls?
The book holds A Fragment of Life, The White People, The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light. A preface by the author explains how each tale came to be written.
What does Pan mean in The Great God Pan?
In the tale, Pan stands for the old nature god and for the hidden force behind the visible world. Characters describe seeing Pan as lifting a veil that ordinary senses draw across reality.
Is The White People a true story?
No. Machen says in his preface that much of its folklore is his own invention, blended with scraps of witch lore. A medical case about a mother's inflamed fingers served as the seed of the idea.
Cite this edition
Machen, Arthur. The House of Souls. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-house-of-souls.
Machen, A. (2026). The house of souls. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-house-of-souls (Original work published 1906)
Machen, Arthur. The House of Souls. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-house-of-souls.
@book{machen2026house,
author = {Machen, Arthur},
title = {The House of Souls},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-house-of-souls},
note = {First published 1906}
}
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