Overview

The essays below are by Michael Phillips, one of the world’s foremost authorities on George MacDonald, and certainly the man who has played the greatest role in reintroducing the Scotsman to the reading public over the past forty years.

The Fiction and Poetry of George MacDonald

by Michael Phillips (fatheroftheinklings.com)

This overview breaks MacDonald’s creative writing into three categories: “realistic” novels,  fantasies, and poetry. These genre-categories all have sub-groupings and potential differences of classification. This is not intended to encyclopedically systematize MacDonald’s writings, but to provide useful information to help readers assess what they want to read. There will be those who will organize his books differently, and there are any number of ways one might do so. Many publishers in the past, for instance, have released Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood, Gutta Percha Willie, and A Rough Shaking as “children’s books” in a uniform set with the Curdie books and North Wind. But I include them with MacDonald’s realistic fiction. Similarly, Adela Cathcart, while in the guise of a “novel,” is really a collection of fairy tales and short stories. So where does one put it? It is a judgement call, and I include it here.

None of this matters. Discover MacDonald and you will enjoy what you read, no matter how I or anyone else categorizes it.

Recognizing that my observations about his fiction will not apply in the same way to every book, let me offer some overview perspectives how to profitably approach George MacDonald’s novels.

Realistic Novels

If we consider the six full-length “fantasy” or “fairy tale” books separately, there are thirty-one titles which I call “realistic” novels. By that I mean they feature real people not fairies, talking animals, goblins, “north winds,” giants, and witches.

These are roughly split between English and the Scottish novels. Eleven of the Scottish novels employ the Scots dialect known as Doric. Once you get used to it, the dialect adds wonderfully to the flavor of the stories. But it is difficult to get used to. For some readers the dialect is a serious hindrance to understanding. I normally do not recommend jumping into the deep end of the pool by starting off with a five-hundred page story heavy with Doric (such as Robert Falconer or Malcolm or Castle Warlock). The fact is, however, that most of MacDonald’s best and most significant novels are indeed among the Doric-laden Scottish fiction.

It is because of the dialect that I have produced editions of MacDonald’s novels with the Doric considerably toned down and mostly translated into manageable English. There has been criticism of my “edited” work over the years. There will thus be those who will steadfastly counsel you to avoid any edition of MacDonald with my name on it. On the other hand, these scaled down editions have been greatly beneficial to many in helping integrate them gently into MacDonald’s corpus, allowing them to become accustomed to his style without having to work so hard at it. It’s an example of different strokes for different folks. Some readers will prefer the original 19th century editions complete with the Doric, some will prefer my edited “Cullen Collection” editions with the dialect easier to understand, and still others will opt for the Scots-English editions published by this website (which feature English translations of Doric dialogue in a two-column format, side-by-side with the original text). All of these options are listed for each book in the Realistic Novels section of this website.

I recommend that you compare Robert Falconer or Sir Gibbie in its original format with my Cullen Collection editions or this website’s Scots-English editions. You will quickly be able to tell which you prefer. Many readers start with the edited editions and tackle the Doric editions later when they feel up to it.

Most of MacDonald’s fiction comes to us as recognizably “Victorian” in style and flavor—longer and more leisurely of pace than modern contemporary fiction, with frequent digressions and author intrusions, sermonizing and moralizing, a clear contrast between “good” and “evil,” etc. The author intrusions in particular in MacDonald’s novels are both lauded and ridiculed by readers and critics, depending on one’s tastes and preferences. One of those critics is none other than our beloved C.S. Lewis. Other recurrent Victorianesque themes are also present—romance, mystery, questioned inheritances, and more than one rags-to-riches tale. The Bildungsroman structure is one MacDonald often uses, following the growth and spiritual development of a character through his or her formative years. (From the German: bildung—education; roman—novel.) These are sometimes called “coming of age” novels, though the process of that development for MacDonald was much different than most secular authors would consider it. For MacDonald, it was entirely an internal spiritual process. 

Robert Falconer, Sir Gibbie, and Castle Warlock might be seen as the prototypical examples of MacDonald’s use of the bildungsroman genre. These are stories whose “plot,” so to speak, is entirely spiritual. No modernist would call them page turners. One encounters long, tedious, rambling passages that in my own initial reading of Robert Falconer I was tempted to skip. (And sometimes did.)

And yet the internal odyssey of an individual’s growth into spiritual manhood or womanhood became for me the epic saga of humanity. In the three titles mentioned above, MacDonald has fashioned spiritual masterworks in a literary style that is unfamiliar to many readers of our day. Here is the eternal “bildung” (education) the universe has been created to teach. It isn’t just Falconer’s or Gibbie’s or Cosmo’s individual quests that weave their spell. Theirs is Everyman’s story.

So too are Donal Grant, Thomas Wingfold, Curate, What’s Mine’s Mine, A Rough Shaking—all variations on the bildungsroman theme. Nor did MacDonald employ the “coming of age,” growth-into-maturity motif only to tell the story of young men. In Guild Court, Mary Marston, Weighed and Wanting, St. George and St. Michael and Heather and Snow the same structure follows five of MacDonald’s memorable young women (among many).

This theme of spiritual growth distinguishes MacDonald’s novels from most of the Victorians (with the notable exceptions of Edna Lyall, a MacDonald protégé of sorts who adopted the same form to masterful effect, as well as Silas Hacking and Mrs. Craik). Though lost to public view for decades in the mid-20th century, MacDonald’s uniqueness as a spiritual novelist lies at the foundation of the explosive renaissance of interest in his works in our time. It is in his realistic novels—though couched as “story” and thus dismissed by much of the literati, that MacDonald’s spiritual vision, and the essence of his revolutionary theological outlook, comes alive.

Two favorites in the English group of novels are Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood and Thomas Wingfold, Curate. Most of MacDonald’s other significant fiction works are Scottish—Malcolm, The Marquis of Lossie, Sir Gibbie, Donal Grant, Castle Warlock, and What’s Mine’s Mine. I recommend all of these eight titles as at the apex of MacDonald’s fictional corpus.

As I have said before, but it cannot be emphasized enough—all MacDonald’s stories have much to recommend them, all have uniquenesses, they are all good. Every title will be somebody’s favorite. My wife and I have quite different lists of our preferences. Eventually you may read them all.

The scope of MacDonald’s realistic fiction is enormous—from his only pure “historical” novel (St. George and St. Michael, set during the English Civil War of the 1600s) to light tales about children, though I hesitate to call them “children’s stories” (Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood, Gutta Percha Willie, and A Rough Shaking), to the odd collection of fairy tales (Adela Cathcart), to the towering Scottish masterworks mentioned above.

One embarking on an exploration of MacDonald’s fiction has a lifetime of delicious reading ahead, a true adventure of discovery into a wonderfully diverse and varied literary corpus.

What else is there to say but…Enjoy!

Recommended Among MacDonald’s Scottish novels

(Most with Doric—Cullen Collection and the Scots-English editions from worksofmacdonald.com recommended)

Malcolm

The Marquis of Lossie (some Doric, not as heavy as others)

Sir Gibbie

Donal Grant

Robert Falconer

Castle Warlock

What’s Mine’s Mine (no Doric)

David Elginbrod

Recommended among MacDonald’s English novels

Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

The Seaboard Parish

Thomas Wingfold, Curate

Paul Faber, Surgeon

There and Back

Fantasy: George MacDonald’s imaginative writings

More has been written about MacDonald’s imaginative writings a thousand times over than about his novels and sermons combined. Those who have delved into their myriad themes more expertly than I am capable of have produced thousands of pages of analysis over the years. There is therefore little need for me to do more than merely note a few points of interest here for those who have not yet encountered this wealth of commentary in other sources.

Those intent on psychoanalyzing George MacDonald (of which there have been many through the years, most of their conclusions, in my opinion, dubious in the extreme) are desirous of getting at the deepest root, the most fundamental “source” of his character and personhood. As I make such inquiries, I reduce the question to: Which is the fundamental George MacDonald—the imaginative muse, or the spiritual seer?

Yet even as I pose the question, the enigma vanishes. It is the chicken and egg conundrum. In MacDonald’s case, neither came first because both came first. The moment his mystical, poetic, imaginative persona began to percolate to the surface in his young heart and brain, he was sending his imagination into the heavens (like Robert Falconer’s kite) imagining what God might be like. Or, turning the coin over to look at the other side, how much of MacDonald’s youthful quandaries about Calvinism’s obsession with hell created the drive to “imagine” God higher and better than he had been taught, and thus helped birth the imagination that later sprouted in so many wonderful directions?

Which came first is a moot point. MacDonald’s was a wonderfully imaginative view of God and his methods, and his was a deeply spiritual imagination. The two aspects of his creative and spiritual being are not two at all—they are one. That is where I leave it, though my brief analysis will satisfy few psychoanalysts!

Now while MacDonald clearly loved creating make-believe worlds and telling imaginative stories and devising fairy tales and fantasies for their own sake (in other words, they are not all parables; we cannot read spiritual “lessons” into every facet of them), on a higher plane he did not view the imagination as a thing in itself to be worshipped in a vacuum. The imagination was God’s gift to mankind, directly implanted into the human psyche as one of many attributes that reveal who God is.

Many read MacDonald’s imaginative and fantasy writings one-dimensionally because they do not apprehend this essential purpose of the imagination as MacDonald understood it. MacDonald’s imaginative writings can of course be appreciated without recognizing their spiritual underpinnings. Many through the years have loved them greatly even though their spiritual foundations remain undetected.

Drawing a parallel with C.S. Lewis’ Narnia is imperfect because most of MacDonald’s fantasies are not direct allegories and contain few overt Christian themes. Yet the observation is useful in recognizing—as subtle as they may be—that there are higher things going on in MacDonald’s fantasies. Many love the Narnia chronicles as mere fairy tales. But none can deny that they reach the zenith of their power only when Narnia’s full Christian themes are recognized and Aslan’s true identity is known.

Similarly, the “deeper magic” of MacDonald’s imaginative writings—like a subtle fragrance that subtly infuses the whole, even in the absence of specific Christian symbols or themes—emerges out of MacDonald’s foundational spiritual vision. Borrowing from his own image in Weighed and Wanting—“God, like his body, the light, is all about us, and prefers to shine in upon us sideways”—we might also say that George MacDonald’s fantasies shine the light of his spiritual vision in sideways, illuminating his overarching life-perspective through the window of the imagination. So while we may not look for direct linkages in every case, to fully understand the heart of the author we have to know who North Wind is.

MacDonald confirms this essential spiritual prism through which he views the imagination, writing in Orts:

In everything that God has made, there is layer upon layer of ascending significance…To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination…The word itself means an imaging or a making of likenesses. The imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought…It is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation. Poet means maker…The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God. Everything of man must have been of God first; and it will help much towards our understanding of the imagination and its functions in man if we first succeed in regarding aright the imagination of God, in which the imagination of man lives and moves and has its being…

The end of imagination is harmony. A right imagination, being the reflex of the creation, will fall in with the divine order of things as the highest form of its own operation…will be content alone with growth towards the divine idea, which includes all that is beautiful in the imperfect imaginations of men…This is the work of the right imagination…

To come now to the culture of the imagination. Its development is one of the main ends of the divine education of life with all its efforts and experiences. Therefore the first and essential means for its culture must be an ordering of our life towards harmony with its ideal in the mind of God. As he that is willing to do the will of the Father, shall know of the doctrine, so, we doubt not, he that will do the will of The Poet, shall behold the Beautiful. For all is God’s; and the man who is growing into harmony with His will, is growing into harmony with himself; all the hidden glories of his being are coming out into the light of humble consciousness; so that at the last he shall be a pure microcosm, faithfully reflecting, after his manner, the mighty macrocosm. We believe, therefore, that nothing will do so much for the intellect or the imagination as being good—we do not mean after any formula or any creed, but simply after the faith of Him who did the will of his Father in heaven.

The gallery of luminaries who have extoled MacDonald’s imaginative writings through the years is of great extent. Two who especially stand out will be familiar to all MacDonald devotees.

Taking them in reverse chronological order, in the Preface to the 1946 Anthology already referenced, C.S. Lewis writes:

Every now and then there occurs in the modern world a genius…who can make such a story. Macdonald [sic] is the greatest genius of this kind whom I know. But I do not know how to classify such genius. To call it literary genius seems unsatisfactory…It goes beyond the expression of things we have already felt. It arouses in us sensations we have never had before…It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper than our thoughts…and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives.

In his 1924 Introduction to Greville MacDonald’s George MacDonald and His Wife, G.K. Chesterton wrote what I consider the definitive essay on George MacDonald’s imagination, adroitly reinforcing the above point, that the imaginative and spiritual elements in MacDonald’s writing cannot be separated.  Chesterton views MacDonald’s imagination through the lens of its theological significance, calling MacDonald’s achievement a “miracle of imagination.”

The originality of George MacDonald has also a historical significance, which perhaps can best be estimated by comparing him with his great countryman Carlyle…If an escape from the bias of environment be the test of originality, Carlyle never completely escaped, and George MacDonald did. He evolved out of his own mystical meditations a complete alternative theology…Carlyle could never have said anything so subtle and simple as MacDonald’s saying that God is easy to please and hard to satisfy. Carlyle was too obviously occupied with insisting that God was hard to satisfy; just as some optimists are doubtless too much occupied with insisting that He is easy to please. In other words, MacDonald had made for himself a sort of spiritual environment, a space…of mystical light which was quite exceptional in his national and denominational environment…When he comes to be more carefully studied as a mystic, as I think he will be when people discover the possibility of collecting jewels scattered in a rather irregular setting, it will be found, I fancy, that he stands for a rather important turning-point in the history of Christendom, as representing the particular Christian nation of the Scots…

The spiritual colour of Scotland, like the local colour of so many Scottish moors, is a purple that in some lights can look grey. The national character is in reality intensely romantic and passionate…

The passionate and poetical Scots ought obviously, like the passionate and poetical Italians, to have had a religion which competed with the beauty and vividness of the passion, which did not let the devil have all the bright colours…

Among the many men of genius Scotland produced in the 19th century, there was only one so original as to go back to this origin. There was only one who really represented what Scottish religion should have been, if it had continued the colour of the Scottish mediaeval poetry. In his particular type of literary work he did indeed realize the apparent paradox of a St. Francis of Aberdeen, seeing the same sort of halo round every flower or bird. It is not the same thing as any poet’s appreciation of the beauty of the flower or bird…It is a certain special sense of significance, which the tradition that most values it calls sacramental. To have got back to it, or forward to it, at one bound of boyhood, out of the black Sabbath of a Calvinist town, was a miracle of imagination.

As is the case with all forms of art, imaginative stories speak to each person individually for reasons subtle and undefined. They strike root within us at deeper levels than the conscious mind, having as much to do with the circumstances in which we first encounter them as the stories themselves. Fairy tales affect children differently than they do adults. What strikes wonder into the heart at one moment may not do so at another.

Recognizing, therefore, that my own objectivity is probably impossible in this case, I offer the following list only for what it may be worth to one trying to decide where to begin with MacDonald’s fantasy writings. My own thoughts have changed over the years. Certain stories I was fond of years ago I view through a more scrutinizing filter at this latter stage of my life. These recommendations, therefore, will likely be to no one’s liking because his or her favorites are not included.

As an example, two lengthy fairy tales that are considered among MacDonald’s classics and that have been published and reprinted probably more times than any of the other of the shorter works—The Light Princess and The Golden Key—I do not happen to care for. Most people love them. I recognize that I am a minority of one.

That said, the imaginative writings I would recommend to a reader coming to MacDonald’s works for the first time would be At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin, truly two of MacDonald’s masterpieces. The “princess sequel,” The Princess and Curdie, (not exactly a “children’s story” and of a considerably different tone than its predecessor) is also full of wonderful spiritual truth. It is noteworthy, too, as illuminating the origin of C.S. Lewis’s wonderful “central thing” passage in Mere Christianity (“Morality and Psychoanalysis”) of what each one of us is making of our inner being (more into “heavenly creatures or hellish creatures”) by our daily choices.

Recommended Among MacDonald’s Full-Length Children’s Tales

At the Back of the North Wind

The Princess and the Goblin

The Princess and Curdie

Recommended Among MacDonald’s Adult Fantasies

(The only adult fantasies!)

      Phantastes

      Lilith

Poetry: George MacDonald’s poetical works

There is evidence that as a writer George MacDonald considered himself a poet first of all. This is somewhat astonishing given that in our time his poetry is almost entirely neglected alongside his fiction and fantasy works. Much of this shift is historical. Poetry has fallen on hard times in today’s literary climate. In Victorian Britain, however, poetry was a best-selling literary genre. Poets were the rock stars of the literary world.

MacDonald was thus a man of his times. He loved poetry. He was constantly scribbling verses in his spare time. His first three published books were all in the form of poetry. Many reprints and collections appeared through the years, some of his poems appearing in multiple forms. (He was an inveterate reviser of poems, even after they had been published. [1]) His novels, in addition to containing spiritual digressions, are also full of poetry. Robert Falconer is so laden with poetry (containing entire chapters of poetry having no bearing on the plot of the story) that Hurst and Blackett, its original publishers, released a new edited edition (MacDonald’s books were “edited” over a century before I came along!) with some of the poetry removed. Nearly all MacDonald’s fictional characters are poets, giving MacDonald free rein to stick poems into his novels whenever he wanted—which he did!

Throughout his life MacDonald continued to publish new volumes of poetry (and revise his previous work), culminating in two massive collections, hundreds of poems!—the ten-volume Works of Fancy and Imagination (1871, six volumes of which were poetry), and the complete two-volume edition, The Poetical Works of George MacDonald (1893). All told, though as I say, there is considerable overlap and some represent translations from other poets, MacDonald published some fifteen volumes of poetry in his lifetime.

Few will make the claim (though his son Ronald makes it) that George MacDonald was one of the Victorian era’s premier poets. His poetry is of note simply because it was so foundational to MacDonald’s being. Poetry represented a deep, visceral, and integral component of his imaginative persona. It isn’t so much a question of whether MacDonald’s poetry is great, or even good. It is simply that MacDonald was a poet. It was who he was, how he viewed himself.

And some of his poetry does indeed rise to heights of the sublime. In no other genre of MacDonald’s diverse corpus does personal taste trump objectivity in determining what we like or recommend—what speaks to us—as in our response to poetry. I have my favorites, and everyone else will have theirs. Better Things and The Hills happen to be two of mine. Then, too, I love the masterful cadence and flow and sound of the untitled “river rhyme” in Chapter 13 of At the Back of the North Wind. In his Story of the Seashore, MacDonald gives a wonderful portrait of the village of Cullen as he recalls the visits of his boyhood. And his lengthy autobiographical poem The Disciple offers one of the few glimpses MacDonald has left us of his own personal struggle for faith during his late teen years while attending Aberdeen University.  It is of enormous significance in MacDonald’s biography, and I have devoted considerable space to a discussion of the poem in both my biographies of MacDonald. I could name more titles from his vast poetical works, yet I shrink from even having mentioned these few because poetry is too individual to recommend at all. But I will let what I have written stand.

[1] See George MacDonald A Writer’s Life, Appendix 3 for fascinating examples of this.