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The Hill of Dreams

Arthur Machen

1,255 ratings
The Hill of Dreams | Arthur Machen

The Hill of Dreams

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The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Later it describes Lucian's attempts to make a living as an author in London, enduring poverty and suffering in the pursuit of art.
e Beit system of publishing in existence amongst them; the great Yahoo nation would surely never feed and encourage a scabby Houyhnhnm, expelled for his foulness from the horse-community, and the witty dean, in all his minuteness, had said nothing of "safe" Yahoos. On reflection, however, he did not feel quite secure of this part of his defense; he remembered that the leading brutes had favorites, who were employed in certain simple domestic offices about their masters, and it seemed doubtful whether the contemplated vindication would not break down on this point. He smiled queerly to himself as he thought of these comparisons, but his heart burned with a dull fury. Throwing back his unhappy memory, he recalled all the contempt and scorn he had suffered; as a boy he had heard the masters murmuring their disdain of him and of his desire to learn other than ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears; he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelligence and manners, merciless, as he went by with his eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. He and his father seemed to pass down an avenue of jeers and contempt, and contempt from such animals as these! This putrid filth, molded into human shape, made only to fawn on the rich and beslaver them, thinking no foulness too foul if it were done in honor of those in power and authority; and no refined cruelty of contempt too cruel if it were contempt of the poor and humble and oppressed; it was to this obscene and ghastly throng that he was something to be pointed at. And these men and women spoke of sacred things, and knelt before the awful altar of God, before the altar of tremendous fire, surrounded as they professed by Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven; and in their very church they had one aisle for the r
mark 06/03/2021
the poor delicate soul, a lotus in the mud, reaching higher and always getting ground down, ever down, into the muck and grime of confined, earthly living. the poor morbid soul, dreaming of the past and of escape, dreaming himself away and into strange places where he will be lord or victim, dreamin
Nancy 02/19/2020
#3 from the Library of the Lost group of books to read.

I'll have to think this one through (I doubt I have the stamina to reread it) before I say anything of substance about it, but I do believe it is one of the most beautiful works I've ever read. Creepy and above all intense, but I can definitel
Bill 02/05/2020

This strange novel by one of the early masters of the weird tale is halfway between Dorian Gray and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Its protagonist is the introverted son of a poor Welsh minister striving to become a writer in the indifferent streets of late 19th century London. There is no p
L.S. 12/29/2019
Arthur Machen is, along with Blackwood and Bierce and Clark Ashton Smith, an early proponent of weird/ supernatural horror fantasy. Whereas Lovecraft seemed to revere Dunsany, Machen's influence is not as apparent. He seems to inhabit the outskirts of literature, as no one's favorite.

From the get-go
Dannii 05/16/2019
I was so sure I was going to love this one, given the 'doomed artist' the synopsis featured, my love for this type of character, and my previous adoration with Machen's work.

His writing was as lyrical as I remembered but whilst his words continued to haunt me, the actual story line did not. If anyth
Patrick.G.P 01/26/2018
The Hill of Dreams follows the aesthete and dreamer Lucian Taylor as he loses himself in nature and mysticism that surrounds the small Welsh village of Caermaen where he grows up, and later as he moves to London to write a book and slowly descends into a strange hallucinatory world of his own creati

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