9 h 49 minAudiobook5 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A familiar London street can lead toward something that ordinary reason cannot explain.
Arthur Machen’s The House of Souls gathers four tales where ordinary British life borders on hidden powers. In A Fragment of Life, Edward and Mary Darnell look beyond household expenses and work toward a stranger reality. In The White People, a girl records secret customs and ceremonies whose meaning she does not fully understand.
The Great God Pan begins with a doctor’s experiment on a young woman, testing the limits of human perception. Troubling encounters and scattered evidence draw others into the mystery. In The Inmost Light, an investigation into a doctor and his wife brings scientific curiosity close to spiritual danger. Across these stories, familiar places conceal possibilities both wondrous and terrible.
What you’ll discover
- Strangeness close to home Step through familiar streets and domestic rooms toward experiences that ordinary reasoning cannot explain.
- Innocence and forbidden knowledge Follow a girl’s account of games and ceremonies whose meaning lies beyond her understanding.
- Curiosity at the edge Encounter doctors whose pursuit of hidden knowledge brings human perception close to spiritual danger.
- Mysteries built from fragments Follow troubling encounters and scattered evidence as investigators try to trace a hidden influence.
- Wonder woven into dread Explore the possibility that visible reality conceals something deeper, stranger, and harder to grasp.
Who will love it
Readers who love shivers in fog-bound London streets, old legends hidden in country woods, and stories told by friends over wine and tobacco. Fans of ghost tales and dreamlike prose will feel at home.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A clerk dreams while his wife counts
- The ten pounds find a thousand uses
- Aunt Marian arrives with her troubles
- A new life opens behind the old one
- Two men talk of sin and sanctity
- A girl's green book of secrets
- Dr. Raymond lifts the veil
- London meets the woman called Helen
- A tale told over dinner
Who’s who
- Edward DarnellA City clerk in Shepherd's Bush who dreams of an ancient wood and slowly follows the call of his old family and its hidden land.
- Mary DarnellHis careful wife, who talks of shillings and servants yet senses light behind the gray walls and begins to follow her husband.
- AmbroseA recluse who believes that sorcery and sanctity are the only realities and who lends Cotgrave a green notebook.
- Dr. RaymondA doctor of transcendental medicine who believes a small operation on the brain will let a person see the god Pan.
- VilliersA curious man about town who finds a ruined friend in Soho and sets out to track down the woman who broke him.
- ClarkeA cautious businessman who secretly collects tales for his Memoirs to Prove the Existence of the Devil and witnesses Raymond's experiment.
- DysonA self-styled man of letters and student of London who tells the Harlesden case and follows a puzzling paper to its end.
- SalisburyA solid, cautious young man who distrusts mystery but cannot shake a crumpled rhyme picked up on a wet night.
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- The key ideas in about 5 minutes, to read today.
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- Hardcover
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- Large print hardcover
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La casa delle anime
by Arthur Machen · 1906
A clerk dreams of a forest well while his wife prices a bed, and four tales ask what waits behind the veil.
Medium level5–10 hours to readItaliano
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In short
What if the street outside your window hides a second world, one that can bring joy, madness or ruin? Arthur Machen builds four tales on that unease.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A clerk dreams while his wife counts
The first tale, A Fragment of Life, opens on Edward Darnell, a City clerk who wakes from a dream of an ancient wood and a clear well. He lives with his wife Mary in a new house in Shepherd's Bush.
Their great question is how to spend the last ten pounds of a gift from her Aunt Marian. Edward longs to furnish the spare room. Mary lists the costs of beds, sheets and vases until the plan collapses.
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- 15-minute summary
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Details
- First published
- 1906
- Language
- Italiano
- Reading time
- 6 h 20 min
- Level
- Medium level
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What is The House of Souls about?
It collects four tales by Arthur Machen: A Fragment of Life, The White People, The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light. Each shows ordinary people meeting a hidden world behind everyday London or the Welsh countryside.
Who is Helen Vaughan in The Great God Pan?
Helen Vaughan is a beautiful and unsettling woman who appears under several names in London. A string of men who meet her suffer ruin or die in terror, and Villiers and his friends slowly trace her past.
What does the god Pan mean in the story?
Pan stands for a hidden power behind the visible world. Characters speak of seeing Pan as lifting a veil, and the symbol hides forces too great to name. The ancients used the image to speak of them.
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.
More by Arthur Machen
All 5 booksMore like this
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