Buchan

Abstract

Contrasting with the previous chapter’s focus on literary obscurity, in this chapter Machin looks at an extremely popular and well-known writer, John Buchan. Redressing the critical neglect of Buchan’s significant body of weird fiction, Machin also considers the intersection of weird and popular fiction during its ‘high phase’, positioning Buchan as a transitional figure between the literary Decadence of the 1890s and the pulp magazine market emergent in the early twentieth century. Using archival material, Machin also presents some of Buchan’s own analysis and discussion of weird fiction, produced in his capacity as a reader for John Lane, a publisher firmly associated with the Decadent 1890s. Machin’s discussion of Buchan’s own weird fiction also takes in some wider contexts of the mode; its intersections with colonial adventure fiction, with paganism, and its demonstration of modernist anxieties regarding the resilience of civilization.