- In his later years, Machen became a Roman Catholic.
- In 1912, approaching his 50th birthday, he joined the staff of the London Evening News.
- His intense, atmospheric stories of horror and the supernatural have been read and enjoyed by many modern horror and fantasy writers, influencing directly Peter Straub, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Karl Edward Wagner, "Sarban" (John William Wall), Joanna Russ, Graham Joyce, Simon Clark, Tim Lebbon, and T. E. D. Klein, to name but a few. Klein's novel The Ceremonies was partly based on Machen's "The White People", and Straub's novel Ghost Story was influenced by The Great God Pan.
- In music, the composer John Ireland found Machen's works to be a life-changing experience that directly influenced much of his composition.
- He entered journalism and two of his best-known works were originally published in the newspaper for which he worked. The Bowman (Evening News, 29 September 1914) gave rise during World War I to the story of the Angel of Mons.
- After a period of near starvation in London, he enjoyed an independent income for a time and brought out some of his best early stories.
- Like Thomas Hardy, Machen responded to the spiritual power and antiquity of the British countryside. His fantasies are often set in medieval England or Wales, as in the autobiographical The Hill of Dreams (1907), which evokes ancient Roman forts and Welsh mysteries. Even his stories set in London are deeply romantic and nostalgic for a pre-industrial era.
- In 1900 he acted with F.R. Benson's touring company.
- The Friends of Arthur Machen (FoAM) is a non-profit international literary society founded in 1998 dedicated to supporting interest in Arthur Machen and his work, and to aid research. It publishes two journals: Faunus, which reprints rare Machen articles and criticism of his work, and Machenalia. It fosters interest not only in Machen but in events in which he played a key part, such as the Angels of Mons affair, and organises psychogeographic excursions. Prominent members include Javier Marías, Stewart Lee and R. B. Russell of Tartarus Press. The society was nominated for a World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional in 2006.
- Machen was celebrated for his stories of the other-world, fringing reality; terror is their keynote. Hieroglyphics, The Hill of dreams, and The children of the pool contain the best known of them.
- His novella The Great God Pan (1890; 1894) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror, with Stephen King describing it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language.".
- Machen's work was deeply influenced by his childhood in Wales and his readings in the occult and metaphysics.
- Theinterest in Machen's works among filmmakers is also shared by Guillermo del Toro and Richard Stanley. Other notable figures with an enthusiasm for Machen have included Brocard Sewell, Barry Humphries, Stewart Lee and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.
- He spent his early years at Llanddewi Fach rectory, three miles north of Caerleon-on-Usk, Monmouth; he attended Hereford Cathedral School until he was seventeen.
- Machen's financial difficulties were only finally ended by the literary appeal launched in 1943 for his eightieth birthday. The initial names on the appeal show the general recognition of Machen's stature as a distinguished man of letters, as they included Max Beerbohm, T. S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw, Walter de la Mare, Algernon Blackwood, and John Masefield. The success of the appeal allowed Machen to live the last few years of his life, until 1947, in relative comfort.
- In politics, Machen was reactionary. He stated in response to a 1937 questionnaire on the Spanish Civil War in the Left Review, "Mr. Arthur Machen presents his compliments and begs to inform that he is, and always has been, entirely for General Franco.".
- The first of his autobiographical works, Far off things (1923), was printed under another title in the Evening News in 1915, and contains pleasing reminiscences written in a mellow spirit.
- He lived most of his life in poverty as a clerk, teacher, and translator.
- An Arthur Machen Society was established in 1948 in the United States and survived until the 1960s. It was followed by the Arthur Machen Society based in the UK, in 1986, which in turn was replaced by the current literary society, The Friends of Arthur Machen.
- He was a Welsh novelist , author, mystic and essayist. He was also a forerunner of 20th-century Gothic science fiction.
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