Le peuple blanc

Born in Wales in 1863, Machen was a London journalist for much of his life.

Among his fiction, he may be best known for the allusive, haunting title story

of this book, "The White People," which H. P. Lovecraft thought to be the

second greatest horror story ever written (after Blackwood's "The Willows").

This wide ranging collection also includes the crystalline novelette "A

Fragment of Life," the "Angel of Mons" (a story so coolly reported that it was

imagined true by millions in the grim initial days of the Great War), and "The

Great Return," telling of the stately visions which graced the Welsh village

of Llantristant for a time. Four more tales and the poetical "Ornaments in

Jade" are all finely told.