A short life of the author
George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish novelist, poet, and Congregationalist minister whose fantasy works — Phantastes (1858), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), and Lilith (1895) — made him the founding father of modern fantasy literature. His influence on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, W. H. Auden, and Madeleine L’Engle is direct and acknowledged. Lewis called MacDonald “my master” and said that Phantastes “baptised my imagination.”
Life
MacDonald was born in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, into a Calvinist farming family. He studied at the University of Aberdeen and trained as a Congregationalist minister, but his theological views — particularly his belief in universal salvation, his rejection of the doctrine of eternal damnation, and his conviction that nature was a vehicle of divine revelation — soon placed him at odds with his congregation. He was forced to resign his pastorate in 1853 and turned to writing to support his family.
He married Louisa Powell in 1851, and they had eleven children — a large, affectionate, financially precarious household that MacDonald depicted with warmth in his realistic novels. He wrote prolifically: over fifty books including fantasy, realistic fiction, poetry, sermons, and literary criticism. He lectured extensively in Britain and the United States, and was a friend of Lewis Carroll (he and his family read the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland before publication, and their enthusiasm helped persuade Carroll to publish it).
He died in Ashtead, Surrey, in 1905.
Phantastes (1858)
MacDonald’s first fantasy novel — subtitled “A Faerie Romance for Men and Women” — follows Anodos (Greek for “pathless” or “wayward”) through a dreamlike Fairyland filled with living trees, enchanted shadows, and mysterious women. The narrative has no conventional plot — it unfolds as a series of encounters, visions, and transformations that trace Anodos’s spiritual journey from self-centeredness to self-sacrifice.
The novel operates by the logic of dreams rather than narrative causality. Its imagery — the Alder-maiden, the Ash-tree, the shadow that attaches itself to Anodos and corrupts everything he touches, the knight in rusty armour — functions symbolically rather than allegorically. MacDonald is not encoding a theological message but creating a landscape in which spiritual realities can be experienced directly.
Lewis’s testimony is the most famous: reading Phantastes at eighteen, he felt “a new quality” — holiness, or the sense of the numinous — enter his imagination. The book did not argue him into Christianity but created an imaginative space in which Christianity became imaginable.
The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and Curdie (1883)
MacDonald’s most famous children’s books. The Princess and the Goblin follows Princess Irene, who lives in a castle above goblin-infested mines, and Curdie, a miner’s son who helps protect her. In an attic room at the top of the castle, Irene discovers her great-great-grandmother — a mysterious, ageless woman spinning thread and tending a fire of roses. The grandmother is invisible to those who do not believe in her.
The sequel, The Princess and Curdie, is darker. Curdie is given the ability to sense people’s true natures by touching their hands — some feel like animal paws, revealing their inner degradation. The novel ends with the destruction of the corrupt city of Gwyntystorm.
These books established the template for literary children’s fantasy that Lewis and Tolkien would develop: a secondary world governed by moral and spiritual laws, where courage and faith are tested against genuine evil.
Other Fantasy Works
- At the Back of the North Wind (1871) — the boy Diamond befriends the North Wind, a beautiful, terrifying female figure who carries him to the country “at her back” — a place that is either death or a vision of divine love
- The Golden Key (1867) — a short fairy tale of extraordinary beauty and mystery, in which a boy and girl travel through a symbolic landscape toward an unnamed destination
- Lilith (1895) — MacDonald’s last and most visionary fantasy, a journey through parallel dimensions featuring the biblical Lilith, Adam’s first wife. The novel is dense, hallucinatory, and theologically ambitious
Realistic Fiction
MacDonald also wrote over thirty realistic novels — David Elginbrod (1863), Robert Falconer (1868), Sir Gibbie (1879), Malcolm (1875) — set in Scotland and dealing with poverty, class, faith, and moral growth. These novels were enormously popular in their day but are now little read, overshadowed by the fantasies. Sir Gibbie, about a mute street urchin in Aberdeen who embodies Christlike goodness, is the best of them.
Critical Standing
MacDonald’s critical reputation has been shaped almost entirely by his influence on Lewis and Tolkien. His fantasies are now recognised as the origin of the modern fantasy genre — the bridge between the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and the secondary-world fantasies of the twentieth century. His realistic novels, once bestsellers, are largely forgotten.
His fantasy works are more interesting and more original than their reputation as “influences” suggests. Lilith in particular is a genuinely visionary work — stranger, darker, and more philosophically ambitious than anything Lewis wrote.
Collecting MacDonald
Victorian first editions of MacDonald’s works (Strahan, Chatto & Windus, Blackie) are scarce and collected. Phantastes (1858, Smith, Elder) in first edition is very valuable — $1,000–$3,000. The Princess and the Goblin (1872, Strahan) with Arthur Hughes illustrations brings $500–$1,500. Lilith (1895, Chatto & Windus) first editions bring $200–$500.