The Hill of Dreams is the story of a young man's quest for beauty through literature, love and, finally, the spiritual alchemy of drugs and dreams. It is widely regarded as Arthur Machen's finest work.

Born and brought up in Monmouthshire, Machen's tales of bohemian fin-de-siecle London were coloured by the dark and mysterious landscapes of his childhood. A contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats all of whom admired his work tremendously, Machen's legacy is central to gothic fiction in the twentieth century. His great literary significance was recognized by H. P. Lovecraft who named Machen as one of the four 'modern masters' of supernatural horror.