2 h 27 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 2 h 27 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a small operation could reveal a hidden world—and leave the person who sees it beyond help?
In Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, Dr Raymond believes he can open the mind to a reality behind everyday life. Clarke watches as Mary, a young woman in Raymond's care, agrees to his experiment. What begins in a quiet house raises a frightening question: how much can a human mind bear to know?
The story unfolds through papers, letters and rumours. Clarke gathers strange accounts, while Villiers encounters a ruined acquaintance in London and follows the mystery. Around Helen Vaughan, a charming woman in society, disturbing events gather. In drawing rooms and doctors' studies, confidence in reason meets something that refuses a clear explanation.
What you’ll discover
- An experiment beyond reason Watch Raymond's certainty turn a quiet room into the threshold of something unknown.
- A mystery in fragments Piece together letters, rumours and troubling accounts alongside men searching for an explanation.
- Horror kept just unseen Feel dread grow through witnesses' faces and hints rather than direct displays of horror.
- Ancient fears beneath society Explore a world where old gods and buried nature disturb respectable rooms.
- The limits of knowledge Confront the unsettling possibility that scientific confidence cannot prepare us for every discovery.
Who will love it
For readers who love atmospheric dread, ghost stories and the roots of modern horror, and anyone curious about Pan and the old gods.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A surgeon offers to lift the veil
- What Mary sees cannot be unseen
- A strange girl and a boy in the woods
- Villiers meets a ruined man in Soho
- Respectable men begin to die
- What the story fears and how it speaks
Who’s who
- Dr RaymondA gifted scientist who believes a small operation on the brain can show a person the hidden reality behind the world.
- ClarkeA careful, sceptical gentleman who witnesses the experiment and spends years gathering strange papers about its consequences.
- MaryA young woman in Raymond's care who agrees to the operation and sees something no one else can describe.
- Helen VaughanA composed girl raised in the country, later a charming woman in society, around whom strange events gather.
- VilliersA sensible London gentleman who stumbles onto a mystery and cannot rest until he understands it.
- HerbertAn old acquaintance of Villiers, found broken and poor in Soho, whose ruin points toward a larger secret.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 2 h 27 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Il grande dio Pan
by Arthur Machen · 1894
A surgeon opens a door in the mind, and the effects spread through London society, leaving ruin and mystery.
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In short
The Great God Pan is a short horror story by the Welsh writer Arthur Machen. It first appeared in 1894, in the same years as Dracula was being imagined and the Decadent movement was shocking London readers.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A surgeon offers to lift the veil
The story opens in a quiet house, where Dr Raymond, a gifted scientist, meets his friend Clarke. Raymond has been working on a theory about the brain. He believes the world we see is only a thin curtain, and that behind it lies a greater reality that most of us never sense.
Raymond claims that a small surgical change in the grey matter of the brain can tear that curtain aside. He calls it a matter of seeing the god Pan, a figure of the wild who stands for all that lies behind ordinary nature. Clarke listens with interest and some unease. He is a careful man, and he wants proof before he believes.
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What is The Great God Pan about?
It is a horror novella about a doctor who performs a brain operation to let a young woman see the hidden world. The effects spread through years and through London society, leaving ruin and mystery in their wake.
Who is Pan in The Great God Pan?
Pan is the Greek god of wild places, shepherds and untamed nature. In Machen's story he stands for the hidden, fearful side of nature that respectable modern life tries to ignore.
When was The Great God Pan written and is it a true story?
Arthur Machen published it in 1894. It is a work of fiction, though it draws on Welsh landscape, Greek myth and Victorian fears about science, desire and the unseen.
The author
Arthur Machen
1863–1947 · Welsh horror and fantasy writer
Arthur Machen was a Welsh writer of supernatural fiction whose work profoundly influenced modern horror, including H. P. Lovecraft. The Great God Pan (1894), his most notorious tale, scandalized Victorian readers and is now regarded as a cornerstone of weird fiction.
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