The Hill of Dreams

Front cover illustration detail of untitled drawing by Sidney Sime

In Far Off Things (1922), Arthur Machen asked whether it was possible '. . . to invent a story which would recreate those vague impressions of wonder and awe and mystery that I myself had received from the form and shape of the land of my boyhood and youth . . . Could one describe hills and valleys, woods and rivers, sunrise and sunset, buried temples and mouldering Roman walls so that a story could be suggested to the reader? Not, of course, a story of material incidents, not a story with a plot in the ordinary sense of the term, but an interior tale of the soul and its emotions; could such a tale be suggested in the way I have indicated?'

However, the book had already been written. The Hill of Dreams had been published in 1907, and has been lauded by writers as diverse as H.P. Lovecraft and Henry Miller.

This edition of The Hill of Dreams contains all three of the original illustrations intended for the book by acclaimed fantasy artist Sidney Sime. It also contains introductions by Mark Valentine, Lord Dunsany, and Machen himself.

Second Tartarus printing. Format: Hardback.