The Hill of Dreams is one of my favorites. This is indeed an "interior tale of the soul."
Here are some comments from various sources on the web:
"Published in 1907, during one of his major spurts of creativity,
The Hill of Dreams is an adventure in the senses -- a celebration of feeling and instinct, of dreaming wide awake in a world opposed to anything outside the daily grind and banal mechanics of cold logic -- itself little more than an illusion shared by the majority. An intense, passionate read, the novel hides within its strangely simplistic seeming 'plot' a deeper story -- and a subtext -- of universal significance."
More:
"Preeminent among these slightly later works is the novel
The Hill of Dreams (1907), which charts the gradual possession of a young artist by a kind of pagan faun-creature who lives within him, rather as Stevenson's Hyde lives within Jekyll. This novel, often considered Machen's finest work, evokes a dark, hallucinatory London, as powerfully realized in a different mode as that inhabited by Sherlock Holmes."
And more:
"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."
Hope you enjoy it.
Please: If you find errors that should be corrected, let me know and I'll do my best to fix them.
This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws.
If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.
To report a copyright violation you can
contact us here.