An Introduction to the World of George MacDonald

With a Biographical Sketch and an Overview of His Writings

by Michael Phillips (fatheroftheinklings.com)

Michael Phillips is 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.

To jump to a section, please select one of the following:

• George MacDonald: A Victorian Literary Rock Star

• MacDonald’s Early Life

• A New Vision of Fatherhood

• Disappointment in the Pulpit

• MacDonald Turns to Fiction

• George MacDonald in the Twentieth Century

• MacDonald’s Realistic Novels Make a Comeback

• An Overview of MacDonald’s Writing

• Biographies

• Making MacDonald’s Novels and Theological Ideas More Accessible

• Recommendations for Getting Started

A fascinating photograph was produced in the latter decades of the nineteenth century showing a group of contemporary authors. It has been featured in a number of books, and I have used it in some of my own. I say “produced” because only two of the men appear to looking in the direction of the camera. That’s because there was no camera! It is a composite put together over a century before Photoshop.

That fact may be interesting to a student of photography. But the truly remarkable thing is that George MacDonald was even included with the best-selling authors of the Victorian era. The modern student of the period might well ask, “Who is George MacDonald, and what is he doing there?”

MacDonald's contemporaries, however, would have been equally surprised to learn that he would be largely forgotten by the middle of the twentieth century. During the final three decades of the nineteenth century, George MacDonald's works were bestsellers and his reputation as a novelist and Christian theologian was immense. His novels sold in Great Britain and in the United States by the hundreds of thousands.

His American lecture tour of 1873-74 was sold-out everywhere he spoke from Boston to Chicago. He was, quite literally, greeted in the United States as a rock star. Though his poetical works do not quite attain the same heights as his other genres of work, he was considered for the prestigious title of “Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom” to succeed Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Richard Reis comments: “In his own time MacDonald was esteemed by an impressive roster of English and American literary and religious leaders…All of them respected, praised, and encouraged him, yet his reputation has nearly vanished while theirs survive.” [1]

Robert Wolfe echoes the same sentiment: “At the height of his career, in the sixties and seventies, MacDonald knew everybody...John Ruskin made MacDonald his closest confidant...Frederick Denison Maurice...invited him to collaborate in writing a book he was planning on the unity of the church...Ruskin and Maurice joined with Lord Houghton, Charles Kingsley, Dean Stanley of Westminster, and others in supporting MacDonald in 1865...for the chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Edinburgh...Tennyson came [to MacDonald's house] and borrowed a Gaelic edition of Ossian...With Thackeray and Leslie Stephen, Leigh Hunt, G. H. Lewes, and others, MacDonald...used to dine with Thackeray's publishers and one of his own, George Smith, of Smith and Elder…Dickens is said to have praised Phantastes…” [2]

Other friends and acquaintances included John Scott, Lady Byron, Alexander Strahan, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the novelists Miss Mulock and Margaret Oliphant, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett, John Stuart Blackie, Arthur Hughes, the Rosettis, Maddox Browne, Alexander Smith, and Norman McLeod. The Rev. C. L. Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was an especially close family friend. His book Alice’s Adventures Underground first saw the light of day by being read to the MacDonald family. The author was encouraged by the response of the MacDonald children to publish it. After seeing MacDonald coming indoors on a windy day with his thick curling hair blowing all about, the sculptor Alexander Munro decided to model a medallion of his friend, two replicas of which were later cast in bronze and hung in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh and in King's College, Aberdeen. Later in life MacDonald grew close to an expanding array of national and international personalities—Lord Mount-Temple, Mark Twain, General Gordon (who gave him the chain mail of a Crusader he had found in the Sudan), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the poets Whittier and Emerson.

George MacDonald's life (1824-1905) spanned the greater part of the nineteenth century. He was a devout Scotsman steeped in a history full of bards, pipers, intense loyalties, clan feuds, and a long line of Scottish heroic figures. His Celtic roots yielded writings full of romance, vision, nature, heather moors, peat fires, high mountains, storm-tossed seas and rugged coastlines.

Born in Huntly in northern Scotland of a middle-class farming family, MacDonald’s early life was one he always cherished and fictionalized in a half-dozen later novels (Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood, Alec Forbes of Howglen, and Robert Falconer as the most prominent). After the death of his mother when he was eight, the chief influences of his life became his father (George MacDonald, Sr.) whom he revered and from whom the image of a good and loving Fatherhood took root, and his father’s mother, a stern Calvinist woman upon whom the portrait of Grandmother Falconer in the novel was based. Along with the revelry of his early years in Huntly, an undercurrent of conflict swirled in his dawning spiritual persona—how to reconcile the two conflicting images of God represented by these two influential personalities (mother and son) of his boyhood.

This milieu of 19th century Calvinism laid down the soil out of which George MacDonald’s transformational perspectives about God later emerged. He was steeped in that theological orthodoxy almost from infancy. He grew uncomfortable with its portrayal of God even as a boy—especially the doctrine of a predestined elect. One of his earliest memories was the sense that he did not want to be loved by a God who did not love everybody. By his teen years he was seriously questioning Calvinism’s theological outlook of a vengeful God whose wrath required the eternal punishment of unrepentant sinners in an everlasting hell of eternal unforgiveness.

MacDonald entered Aberdeen University at sixteen, where he studied Chemistry and Physics. During those years his crisis of belief came to a head. He later recounted his journey of doubt in his long narrative poem The Disciple. By the time of his graduation, MacDonald had successfully wrestled through quandaries raised by the Calvinism of his boyhood, had discovered a secure faith of his own, and had decided to enter the ministry. Two years followed at Highbury Theological College in London.

During these years, and as he grew into his twenties, an alternate perspective of God as a loving and forgiving Father sent down roots in the soil of George MacDonald’s newly invigorated personal faith. His expanding perspective of God’s character and eternal purposes led inevitably to a revision of his view of salvation, death, hell, and the atonement—death not closing the door to repentance, salvation not based on Jesus saving mankind from the wrath of God but rather leading us to our loving Father, hell being redemptive rather than punitive (God’s workshop intended to lead sinners to reconciliation with their Father), and the atonement being a mutual partnership between man and Jesus to conquer sin in this life, not a get-out-of-jail-free card for the next.

My own quest to discover George MacDonald’s transformative writings began almost exactly fifty years ago. Following a similar path—questioning certain theological underpinnings of my own evangelical upbringing, and a gradual expansion of my perspectives about God and his work—I found much in MacDonald to relate to. Through his writings I was liberated to believe in a large-hearted and infinitely forgiving God. Soon I was engaged in what became a lifetime work to introduce others to this spiritual prophet from a bygone era, and to make his nearly forgotten writings both accessible and understandable to Christians of my own time.

MacDonald’s radical departures from traditional orthodoxy led to the erroneous charge that has followed him ever since, that he was a universalist, did not believe in hell, and was therefore a heretic. It is one of the unfortunate judgments that regularly follows MacDonald’s enthusiastic readers—all the same things have been said about me! MacDonald’s persistent, continual, and unrelenting emphasis on the truth of the Bible, and on the imperative of obedience to the example and commands of Jesus as the only basis for true Christian faith reveals this charge not only as baseless, but absurd.

As his liberating new vision of God’s Fatherhood deepened, MacDonald’s imaginative outlook on life also began to blossom. These two aspects of his essential being—the spiritual and the imaginative—cannot be separated. MacDonald’s imagination played an intrinsic role in birthing his expansive perspectives about God, while the image of a good and loving Father-Creator fueled the joy that burst into flower in his imagination. MacDonald looked forward eagerly to conveying his imaginative vision of God and his eternal purposes through a life’s career in the pastorate. His heart’s desire was to tell people about the wonderful goodness of the Father of Jesus.

Early in 1851, shortly after his 27th birthday, he was called as minister to a small congregational church in Arundel on the south coast of England. Two months later he and Louisa Powell were married.

MacDonald’s brief tenure at Arundel, however, would prove to be his first as well as his last pulpit. The complex intermingling of imagination and spirit so fundamental to MacDonald’s spiritual vision was unsettling to Arundel’s working-class population. Influential leaders among his congregation found the poetic and “mystical” bent of MacDonald’s uncommon theology more than they were prepared to tolerate, infused, as they interpreted it, with the liberalism of “German theology”. MacDonald made the mistake of expressing his belief that animals would share in the afterlife. Even worse were hints that seemed to allow for the possibility of redemption for unbelievers after death. The church deacons were scandalised at the implied heresy. Pressure was put on MacDonald to resign, though he endured their efforts to oust him for two years. Eventually he bowed to their wishes and resigned in 1853.

MacDonald was already writing by this time. Poetry and fairy tale were inevitable by-products of the wonder of an infinitely loving God. As MacDonald was able to imagine God more loving than the God of his Calvinist boyhood, his imagination took flight in many directions. His first writings were poems and fantasies—outgrowths of his “imaginatively spiritual” outlook on all things.

After leaving the pastorate and turning to writing more seriously, poetry and fantasy remained MacDonald’s first loves. His literary career was launched in 1855 with the publication of a lengthy romantic poem entitled Within and Without. The book attracted the admiration of Lady Byron, the poet’s widow, who spread the word in literary circles of a rising new star on the literary horizon. A second volume from MacDonald’s hand, simply entitled Poems, was published in 1857. It was followed in 1858 by the fantasy Phantastes. Though these years, with a growing family that eventually numbered eleven children, were ones of financial struggle, MacDonald began to gain a reputation among the literati of London. As he attracted wider notice, he began to be in demand as a lecturer and preacher. A wide array of associations evidenced MacDonald’s rising stature among the eminent personalities of the time.

MacDonald had been a published author for eight years before his first novel was published. His career took a major leap forward in 1863 with the release of his first lengthy realistic Scottish novel, David Elginbrod. Its instant success vaulted MacDonald into the lofty regions of best-sellerdom. For the rest of his life he was known as one of the eminent Victorian novelists of his era. Some indication of his renown may be gathered from the fact that Queen Victoria gave copies of Robert Falconer to her grandchildren. Everybody read his books—Lewis Carroll, John Ruskin, H.G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Edna Lyall, Mark Twain (with whom there was talk of a collaboration), as well as the queen herself.

More poetry, many collections of short stories, and a half dozen volumes of theological and literary essays all followed from his prolific pen over the next thirty years. George MacDonald’s reputation through the latter four decades of the 19th century, however, rested primarily on his best-selling realistic novels and imaginative children’s books. Following David Elginbrod came an extraordinary list of best-sellers: Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867), Robert Falconer (1868), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), and The Princess and the Goblin (1872). In the following decades, George MacDonald continued to produce a succession of memorable fantasies and magnificent portrayals of Scottish and English life: the doublet Malcolm (1875) and The Marquis of Lossie (1877), Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876), Sir Gibbie (1879), Castle Warlock  (1882), Donal Grant (1883), What’s Mine’s Mine (1886). All these major novels were informed and suffused with his uncommon perspectives about God and the practical Christian life

In the forty-two years of his active writing career, the enormity of his output was staggering. MacDonald produced over fifty volumes of immense variety. Among the most remarkable aspects of his prodigious career is the fact that many of these books were over 400 pages in length and some ranged over 700.

In his obituary of MacDonald in the London Daily News, G.K. Chesterton wrote: “George MacDonald was one of the three or four greatest men of the nineteenth century.” [3]

After his death in 1905, MacDonald’s reputation quickly dwindled. The reading public of the new century had little appetite for 400-600 page “religious novels”. The reception of his realistic fiction was also hampered by his use of heavy Scots dialect in eleven of his novels. MacDonald’s imaginative and fantasy writings gradually eclipsed his fiction work in the mid-twentieth century. Eventually MacDonald’s name became virtually unknown outside literary academia.

The most important of MacDonald's admirers in the mid-twentieth century was C. S. Lewis, who repeatedly acknowledged MacDonald as one of the most important inspirers of his own fantasies and theological writings. In his own autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis describes how reading MacDonald's Phantastes began a process of conversion from skepticism to Christianity. In The Great Divorce, Lewis makes MacDonald his guide and mentor. Another Lewis volume, George MacDonald: An Anthology, is a formal acknowledgment of the debt Lewis felt toward MacDonald and consists of selections from his works. In its Preface Lewis says of MacDonald, “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation. Honesty drives me to emphasize it.” [4] And throughout Lewis's various published letters are sprinkled brief informal glimpses of the importance MacDonald's writings played in Lewis's personal reading program and spiritual growth. “I have read a new MacDonald since I last wrote, which I think the very best of the novels... ,” he wrote to Arthur Greeves in 1931. [5]  These letters covering many years include over sixty references (some lengthy discussions) to MacDonald’s novels. After his introduction to MacDonald in 1916, Lewis was still reading the Scotsman avidly forty-five years later.

An increasing awareness of the importance of MacDonald’s realistic novels during the last two decades of the 20th century led to the worldwide renaissance of interest in the full corpus of MacDonald’s life-work that we know today. This effort was led in the 1980s by two publishers—Bethany House and Sunrise Books. Bethany’s ten-year commitment to reissue MacDonald’s novels in more “user-friendly” formats was accompanied by collections of his non-fiction writings and the first major biography of MacDonald published in America. Sunrise partnered in this vision by producing a line of quality leather-bound collector MacDonald editions in their original 19th century format—the first matching set of its size produced in the twentieth century.

The reasons for the resurgence inaugurated by these efforts is many. No doubt chief among them is the alluring power of MacDonald’s novels to move their readers. MacDonald’s vision of life on multiple dimensions, and his unusual insight into the application of spiritual principles in daily life situations, are without peers.

The reader coming to MacDonald’s novels for the first time immediately encounters two aspects of his writing style that can slow down their reading considerably. First, MacDonald frequently used lowland Scots dialect for the dialogue between his characters which few now understand at a glance. Second, MacDonald's tendency toward preachy rambling periodically sends the narrative off on tangential discourses which are not to everyone’s taste.

The experienced MacDonald reader finds that such idiosyncrasies add to the uniqueness, charm, and flavor of the author’s distinctive style. For those who perceive these qualities not as hindrances but as stylistic strengths, MacDonald’s novels rise to the first rank. It is then that the excellence of his stories shines forth—with their shrewd characterizations, lively drama, suspenseful and intricate plots, authentic dialogue, captivating realism, and what some call a sacramental view of nature and all of life. The stories are enhanced by spiritual truths woven in and throughout the characters whose lives open before us.

To accomplish these complex and diverse objectives, MacDonald continually weaves two parallel threads through his novels—that of the “plot,” and that of the internal spiritual journeys of the characters. MacDonald moves freely from one level to another. It is at this point that MacDonald's novels excel. His characters are alive. You feel with them. You accompany them on their inner journeys of growth. They become role models and mentors!

The world of nineteenth century Scotland is often one of the “characters” in MacDonald’s novels. C.S. Lewis comments on it in this way: “All that is best in his novels carries us back to that `kaleyard' world of granite and heather, of bleaching greens beside burns that look as if they flowed not with water but with stout, to the thudding of wooden machinery, the oatcakes, the fresh milk, the pride, the poverty, and the passionate love of hard-won learning.” [6]

Let me now give a brief overview of the literary landscape represented by MacDonald’s life and the major genres in which he wrote. I identify four main areas of interest, or genres of his work: Fiction, theology, fantasy, poetry. These may be summarized loosely as follows:

Fiction—31 realistic novels.

Theology—5 full books and many excerpts embedded in the novels.

Fantasy—4 full length children’s stories and tales, 2 full length adult fantasies , and many groupings of short stories and fairy tales published in many different collections.

Poetry—Approximately 12 full books, though with much overlap, repetition, and different groupings.

In addition to these major genres of work, MacDonald also produced three books of literary essays and several titles which might loosely be categorized as translations of foreign poetry, and here also much overlap and repetition exists.

MacDonald stands at the apex of Victorian writers as a novelist, as a groundbreaking theologian, as an imaginative genius, and (perhaps somewhat lower than the apex) as a poet. His achievement in all four genres is nothing short of remarkable. Considering how harmoniously they weave and intertwine into a unity of life-vision—each playing it’s appointed role in the other, each illuminating the other…superlatives fail.

Who else can one think of who has contributed so much in all four areas? I can think of none. The only possible candidates who come to mind might be G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis. Yet neither of them approach the breadth, range, and groundbreaking significance (possibly with the exception of poetry) that MacDonald exhibited in all four.

These genres thus form four cornerstones upon which the remarkable edifice of George MacDonald lifetime work is built.

For those inclined to pursue MacDonald’s life-biography in greater depth, there are several extensive biographies and numerous smaller ones, mostly detailing the events of MacDonald’s life. I have written two biographies which approach his life somewhat differently. The first, George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller (1987), while giving a chronological record of his life, looks at MacDonald thematically, as a spiritual man. I have attempted to examine the forces throughout MacDonald’s life that led to the perspectives found in his books—what he believed and why, seen against a backdrop of the spiritual climate of the 19th century. I call it an “interpretive biography.”

The second, George MacDonald A Writer’s Life (2018) traces MacDonald’s life chronologically alongside the books he was writing at each phase of his life. Its purpose is to illuminate the background out of which his writings emerged. It thus presents a brief synopsis and study of the themes of MacDonald’s books as they are placed in the flow of MacDonald’s life. Those interested in how MacDonald’s books came to be written, and what was going on in his life at the time of their writing, may find this unusual approach illuminating.

A comprehensive listing of biographies is presented in Resources.

In addition to my own two biographies of MacDonald and my studies about his books, much of my work of the last forty-five years has involved producing new editions of his novels and theology to make them more accessible and understandable to those coming to MacDonald’s vast corpus for the first time. Sometimes this involves simply toning down the Scot’s dialect, which I have done in the fiction editions of The Cullen Collection. With MacDonald’s non-fiction writings, I have written to explain and illuminate his sometimes complex, and often controversial, ideas. My chief objective in both cases is to place MacDonald’s books into their proper historical and spiritual context, enabling readers to discover the unifying themes that weave all his writings into a cohesive tapestry of imaginative and spiritual beauty.

MacDonald’s corpus of writings is a gold mine, a veritable mother lode that plumbs the depths of God’s character and eternal purposes. My objective in all the editions of MacDonald I have produced, and my additional studies of his work and biographies of his life, is to open the richness of that gold mine to readers who will be enabled to explore its many veins and tunnels for years to come. As C.S. Lewis discovered, as I discovered, as many thousands have discovered, once begun the journey never ends.

Those coming to MacDonald for the first time often find themselves besieged by occasionally conflicting recommendations. Everyone has his or her favorites and will be eager to say, “You have got to read this!” Unfortunately, most such statements are based on personal taste, experience, and preference, not necessarily what is best for one individual or another at a given point in his or her life. Recognizing that every man’s or woman’s or child’s path into the world of MacDonald is uniquely his own, I seldom simply push my own favorites. Rather I assess what might be best to help each individual get started in that world. Recognizing that MacDonald wrote with such breadth and diversity that he wrote something for everyone, but that not every book will suit every reader, I try to provide objective information about various options, and then allow each to decide for himself what to read.

At the outset, I urge most to set aside the enthusiastic advice they are given by those pushing their personal preferences, put those recommendations on the shelf for a while, and come back to them later. Devotees of the novels, for example, often recommend Robert Falconer. My affection for this book is enormous. It is one of my favorites.  Robert Falconer is probably MacDonald’s most well-known novel, and certainly one of the most significant in his biography. Everyone should read it…but not first. It is full of dialect that is nearly unintelligible even to many experienced readers (which is why the editions of The Cullen Collection are helpful), and is MacDonald’s second longest book. It can be a difficult book to wade through.

Similarly, theological enthusiasts will point to this or that sermon among MacDonald’s theological works that they think everyone simply has to read. The sermon called “Justice” may be the most oft-recommended sermon. It, too, is one of my favorites, and is a sermon everyone should read. But there will be time to dip into “Justice” and the rest of the sermons later.

Others will have this fairy tale or that short story, or one poem or another, to urge upon you. Many tell their friends to start with Phantastes because C.S. Lewis liked it. Like Falconer, however, Phantastes is an unfortunate choice to begin with. There is plenty of time to mine its imaginative depths later, but not as one’s first MacDonald read.

These titles are among MacDonald’s most well-known. Yet when starting with Falconer or Phantastes, new MacDonald readers can become frustrated and assume MacDonald has little for them. I received a letter from a reader telling of exactly this experience. Phantastes was recommended, she hated it, and assumed all MacDonald’s writings were the same. I tried to steer this individual toward some of MacDonald’s other titles that are more representative of his overall writing, and hopefully she is now loving what she reads.

The scope of MacDonald’s corpus is overwhelming. Justice, Phantastes, and Robert Falconer may not give the balanced and objective overarching perspective of MacDonald’s full corpus that is particularly important when one is becoming accustomed to MacDonald’s imaginative world and his new ideas for the first time. This is especially true in the case of Phantases, which was MacDonald’s first published prose work. Though many love it, the story is not representative of MacDonald’s corpus and style as a whole, nor does it resonate with the spiritually thematic tone that later became MacDonald’s signature tune. When the time comes for these works, they will be appreciated more from having waited until one has a little more of MacDonald under his or her reading belt.

For a reader primarily interested in fantasy and fairy tales, you cannot do better than beginning with The Princess and the Goblin and At the Back of the North Wind. These may be George MacDonald’s two best-selling books of all time, and certainly have been among the most popular for almost 150 years. They were two of the first MacDonald stories I read almost fifty years ago, and many thousands through the years have fallen in love with MacDonald because of these two books.

For fiction readers, I must break from what I said a moment ago and recommend my two personal favorites among MacDonald’s novels—Malcolm and Sir Gibbie. I do so because I happen to consider them MacDonald’s best novels. The plot of Malcolm is without a doubt MacDonald’s most intricate and full of twists and mysteries that keep accelerating all the way through. And once you meet the character of “wee Sir Gibbie,” you will never forget him. Best of all, if you love these two books as I do, they both have sequels!

Wading into MacDonald’s non-fiction and theological writings presents a stiffer challenge, yet the rewards are great. As much as I love MacDonald’s novels, I may love his ideas even more!

For a thematic overview of MacDonald’s spiritual vision, my compilation of writings from MacDonald’s sermons and novels, Discovering the Character of God, offers a wonderful introduction to the scope of MacDonald’s perspective about God’s nature and eternal purposes.

Those interested in reading some of MacDonald’s sermons in a somewhat easier format than the originals, which can be very difficult, will find my edited selections in Your Life of Christ a great place to begin what will likely become a lifetime adventure. My introduction to the book, and then the additional introductions to each chapter, lay out MacDonald’s ideas in an orderly and sequential pattern.

There will also be intrepid readers who want to dive into the deep end of the pool with MacDonald’s sermons, and tackle the full scope of his theological writings. George MacDonald’s Spiritual Vision: An Overview offers a brief overarching perspective. It is most fruitfully read in conjunction with George MacDonald’s Transformational Theology of the Christian Faith and The Gospel According to George MacDonald.

In a general way, I would urge most new MacDonald readers (though long-time readers keep coming back again and again to these titles, too, as perennial favorites) to choose from among the following titles for their initial reading program:

Biographies

George MacDonald Victorian Mythmaker—Roland Hein

From a Northern Window (in the Cullen Collection edition of Far Above Rubies.)—Ronald MacDonald

George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller—Michael Phillips

George MacDonald A Writer’s Life—Michael Phillips

Novels (Cullen Collection editions especially recommended)

Malcolm

        The Marquis of Lossie

        Sir Gibbie

        Donal Grant

Robert Falconer

        Thomas Wingfold, Curate

Non-Fiction Theological Writings

George MacDonald’s Spiritual Vision: An Overview

A succinct overview of the nine most salient points of MacDonald’s theological perspective by Michael Phillips

The Gospel According to George MacDonald

A thematic and sequential compilation from George MacDonald’s most well-known sermons

Discovering the Character of God

An anthology compiled by Michael Phillips

Your Life in Christ

A grouping of edited sermons by Michael Phillips

George MacDonald’s Transformational Theology of the Christian Faith

An anthology of MacDonald’s complete sermons, presented in both original and edited form, with introductory notes by Michael Phillips

Fantasy

At the Back of the North Wind

The Princess and the Goblin

[1] George MacDonald by Richard Reis, p. 17

[2] The Golden Key by Robert Lee Wolfe, pp. 4-5

[3]  G.K. Chesterton, Obituary article in The London Daily News, Sept. 23, 1905, quoted in George MacDonald, Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller by Michael Phillips, page 344.

[4] George MacDonald, An Anthology, Preface, p. 20

[5] They Stand Together,  p. 402

[6] George MacDonald, An Anthology, Preface, p. 12