‘The White People’ is a highly influential horror story of a young girl’s discovery of ancient magic. It was written in the late 1890s as part of a longer unfinished novel, some sketches from which went into his book ‘Ornaments in Jade.’ Fans of supernatural fiction often cite this story as a classic in the genre.
Literary critics see Arthur Machen’s works as a significant part of the late Victorian revival of the gothic novel and the decadent movement of the 1890s.