#189 in Horror
The Great God Pan
- 74
- Pages
- about 1.5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Great God Pan” is a dark occult novella of the 1890s, short enough to read at a sitting. An experiment meant to let a girl named Mary see the supernatural world is followed by years of strange events and deaths around a woman called Helen Vaughan. Some present-day readers find it mild as horror and its handling of myth scattered.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Great God Pan is an 1894 horror and fantasy novella by the Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Machen was inspired to write The Great God Pan by his experiences at the ruins of a pagan temple in Wales. What would become the first chapter of the novella was published in the newspaper The Whirlwind in 1890. Machen later extended The Great God Pan and it was published as a book alongside another story, "The Inmost Light", in 1894. The novella begins with an experiment to allow a teenager named Mary to see the supernatural world. This is followed by an account of a series of mysterious happenings and deaths over many years surrounding a woman named Helen Vaughan.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.1 across 121 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 45% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Horror average of 7.5. That is how 7.3 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.0 | 42 | 35% |
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 79 | 65% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Great God Pan?
It has 74 pages — shorter than 99% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Horror — with scores between 6.7 and 8.0, closest to this book.
