Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    George MacDonald: A Writer's Life
    George MacDonald: A Writer's Life
    George MacDonald: A Writer's Life
    Ebook1,178 pages

    George MacDonald: A Writer's Life

    By Michael Phillips

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The leading MacDonald scholar and biographer presents the most comprehensive work to date on the 19th century author’s life and work.
     
    Best known for his fiction and fairy tales, such as the immortal classics Robert Falconer and At the Back of the North Wind, the Victorian author and theologian George MacDonald inspired some of the greatest writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Most notably, C.S. Lewis credits MacDonald’s books with inspiring his works of fantasy fiction as well as putting him on the path to Christianity.
     
    In this major biographical work, MacDonald scholar Michael Phillips examines how the events of the author’s life contributed to his work and legacy. Referring to this volume as a “bibliographic biography,” Phillips brings his expertise to bear on the complete corpus of MacDonald’s fiction, pointing out each book’s essential themes, and offering insights into how each title can be most perceptively be read.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 7, 2019
    ISBN9780795352737
    George MacDonald: A Writer's Life
    Author

    Michael Phillips

    Professor Mike Phillips has a BSc in Civil Engineering, an MSc in Environmental Management and a PhD in Coastal Processes and Geomorphology, which he has used in an interdisciplinary way to assess current challenges of living and working on the coast. He is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research, Innovation, Enterprise and Commercialisation) at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and also leads their Coastal and Marine Research Group. Professor Phillips' research expertise includes coastal processes, morphological change and adaptation to climate change and sea level rise, and this has informed his engagement in the policy arena. He has given many key note speeches, presented at many major international conferences and evaluated various international and national coastal research projects. Consultancy contracts include beach monitoring for the development of the Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay, assessing beach processes and evolution at Fairbourne (one of the case studies in this book), beach replenishment issues, and techniques to monitor underwater sediment movement to inform beach management. Funded interdisciplinary research projects have included adaptation strategies in response to climate change and underwater sensor networks. He has published >100 academic articles and in 2010 organised a session on Coastal Tourism and Climate Change at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in his role as a member of the Climate, Oceans and Security Working Group of the UNEP Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands. He has successfully supervised many PhD students, and as well as research students in his own University, advises PhD students for overseas universities. These currently include the University of KwaZuluNatal, Durban, University of Technology, Mauritius and University of Aveiro, Portugal. Professor Phillips has been a Trustee/Director of the US Coastal Education and Research Foundation (CERF) since 2011 and he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Coastal Research. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Victoria, British Columbia and Visiting Professor at the University Centre of the Westfjords. He was an expert advisor for the Portuguese FCT Adaptaria (coastal adaptation to climate change) and Smartparks (planning marine conservation areas) projects and his contributions to coastal and ocean policies included: the Rio +20 World Summit, Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands; UNESCO; EU Maritime Spatial Planning; and Welsh Government Policy on Marine Aggregate Dredging. Past contributions to research agendas include the German Cluster of Excellence in Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) and the Portuguese Department of Science and Technology.

    Read more from Michael Phillips

    Related to George MacDonald

    Titles in the series (38)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Literary Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Man On A Mission

      Jun 18, 2021

      Man On A Mission
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Best Fiction Reads Of 2018: The Monitor's Picks

      Dec 5, 2018

      A reimagining of 'Beowulf' and Anne Tyler's latest are two of the works of fiction that made the cut for our list.

      2 min read

    • Article

      They've Lost Their Minds In San Francisco

      Aug 27, 2019

      San Francisco, a city described in song for its natural beauty, is descending into an abyss of homelessness, the use of sidewalks as toilets and a place you might not want to visit, much less live. The latest, but surely not the last demonstration of

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Coleridge Way

      Nov 5, 2021

      The Coleridge Way
      6 min read

    • Article

      In The Novel ‘Emily’s House,’ The Dickinsons’ Irish Maid Speaks Her Mind

      Oct 27, 2021

      Amy Belding Brown’s historic novel “Emily’s House” sheds light on Emily Dickinson and her family, through the observations of their Irish maid.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Six Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Flannery O’Connor

      Nov 1, 2019

      O'Connor was amused about Ronald Reagan possibly acting in one of her stories.  The post Six Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Flannery O’Connor appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      May 11, 2023

      Michael Wood On…
      3 min read

    • Article

      Pastor Jo Swart

      Aug 26, 2022

      Pastor Jo Swart
      7 min read

    • Article

      Facts Of Life

      Mar 21, 2021

      Facts Of Life
      2 min read

    • Article

      Aelfred’s Britain

      Jul 12, 2018

      Aelfred’s Britain
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ten Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About C.S. Lewis

      Jan 3, 2020

      Soon after they became friends in the 1920s, J. R. R. Tolkien began showing Lewis snatches of a massive myth he was creating about Middle Earth. The post Ten Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About C.S. Lewis appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Devon, Droves And Jacobites

      Apr 11, 2020

      Devon, Droves And Jacobites
      13 min read

    • Article

      Big Mac And Fries Matter

      Aug 26, 2021

      Big Mac And Fries Matter
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dear Uncle Dickie

      May 1, 2023

      Dear Uncle Dickie
      7 min read

    • Article

      Off The Shelf

      Feb 28, 2018

      COMPILED BY KIRSTY MCKENZIE In our disposable world, it’s refreshing to find this compendium of artisans, trades and projects that focuses on durable items made by hand by true craftspeople. Made to Last features 50 artisans from around the world and

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Forgotten Translation

      Feb 12, 2022

      A Forgotten Translation
      2 min read

    • Article

      David Copperfield

      Jul 13, 2022

      David Copperfield
      3 min read

    • Article

      Necrolog

      Jun 16, 2022

      John Nicholson was the only child of Captain W Ivan Nicholson and Eleanor (Nella) Zollner, daughter of the Danish Consul. In 1946, when John was six, the family moved to Flying Rat Cottage in Great Dunmow, Essex, where they kept poultry, plus a goat

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Allure Of Knowledge

      Aug 12, 2021

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Mark A Waddell Cambridge University Press 2021 Pb, 232pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781108441650 Reading Mark Waddell’s excellent book brought back to mind the time I gave a tou

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Library

      Apr 17, 2020

      The Library
      4 min read

    • Article

      Mid-century Modern

      Sep 3, 2021

      Mid-century Modern
      3 min read

    • Article

      Biography & memoir

      Jun 29, 2022

      Biography & memoir
      13 min read

    • Article

      Little Golden Books

      Oct 1, 2020

      Little Golden Books
      2 min read

    • Article

      The 1950s Irish Convent Guide To Green Living

      Oct 20, 2021

      What with the energy crisis and the COP26 Climate Change event, I expect we’re all facing an austere winter. But I do feel I’ve had good training for this – at my convent boarding school in 1950s Dublin. The rules then were exceptionally green. Heati

      3 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Sep 8, 2022

      Reviews
      6 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Dec 19, 2021

      by Nikki Crutchley HarperCollins — $35 Many things make this thriller stand out. For a start, the narrators are reliable. That’s refreshing, these days. Crutchley tells her story in more than one voice and time period, but all are clearly handled and

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for George MacDonald

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      George MacDonald - Michael Phillips

      George

      MacDonald A

      Writer’s Life

      Michael Phillips

      Introductory material © 2018 by Michael Phillips

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

      Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

      ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5273-7

      www.RosettaBooks.com

      The Cullen Collection

      of the Fiction of George MacDonald

      New editions of George MacDonald’s classic fiction works updated and introduced by Michael Phillips

      MICHAEL PHILLIPS, a devotional writer and best-selling novelist, has published more than a hundred original titles spanning a forty-year writing career from 1977 to the present. In addition to his own fiction, he is widely known for his work in bringing the writings of Victorian George MacDonald back into print in the 1980s when MacDonald’s reputation was nearly lost to public view. His major biography of MacDonald (George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller) accompanied twenty-six reissued edited fiction and non-fiction titles by MacDonald that reestablished MacDonald’s stature in the twentieth century as a Christian visionary with singular insight into the nature of God and his eternal purposes. Phillips is also editor of The Masterline Series of studies about George MacDonald, and publisher of The Sunrise Centenary Editions of the Works of George MacDonald. When this new series of fiction titles is complete, he will have produced eighty-five editions of MacDonald’s work. Through the years Phillips has come to be recognized as a man with keen insight into the life, ideas, theology, and heart of George MacDonald. His ongoing MacDonald studies and research have also produced the titles: George MacDonald’s Spiritual Vision, George MacDonald and the Late Great Hell Debate, George MacDonald’s Transformational Theology of the Christian Faith, Bold Thinking Christianity, The Commands, and The Commands of the Apostles.

      Warm and sincere thanks to those who have contributed to the research, fact-checking, proofing, and with much other assistance for the volumes of The Cullen Collection, including but not limited to: David Hiatt, Lora Hattendorf, Joseph Dindinger, Rolland Hein, Dan Cook, Barbara Amell, Christopher MacDonald, Karen Pardieck, Daniel Speake, Jess Lederman, David Jack, Karen Furber, Jean Damon, Laurie Edwards, Jim Motter, Sue Mollenkamp, Sarah Romanov, Ruthie Petit, Tom Petit, GlenAnn Egan, Dorothy Perry, Janet Montgomery, Judy Phillips, and of course, where they are now all together…Elizabeth Yates, C.S. Lewis, and George MacDonald himself.

      ORDERING THE CULLEN COLLECTION: Titles in The Cullen Collection, individually or as a complete set, as well as additional books by and about George MacDonald, are available singly from Amazon, from WISEPATHBOOKS.COM (distributor of The Sunrise Centenary Editions of the Works of George MacDonald), and from FATHEROFTHEINKLINGS.COM. Quantity and full-set discounts available only from TheCullenCollection.com. All titles of The Cullen Collection also available on Kindle from Amazon. Since the printing of the Introductory Edition of this book, a new Cullen Collection Reader’s Guide has been produced and is available with the other titles of The Cullen Collection.

      NOTE TO READERS: In the preparation and production of this book and the volumes of The Cullen Collection, every effort has been made to insure accuracy and to provide an error free text. In spite of fact checks by knowledgeable MacDonald scholars and multiple proof-readings, mistakes, typos, computer glitches, and other inaccuracies will surely have crept in. This is inevitable when dealing with documents and texts from over a century in the past about which information is both scanty and conflicting. All MacDonald research is ongoing. New facts and insights will continue to be revealed. If you find a misprint or what you suspect to be an inaccuracy in any of the volumes of the series, we would be most grateful if you would call it to our attention, especially concerning varying textual editions of MacDonald’s novels that were unknown at the time of publication. As emphasized in Appendix 1, while not attempting an exhaustive list of editions, we are yet desirous of further information that we have not had access to in order to improve the accuracy of further editions of this volume. We will be most appreciative of your assistance in improving the accuracy of successive printings, keeping them error free and consistent with current MacDonald research.

      The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald

      1.Phantastes (1858)

      2.David Elginbrod (1863)

      3.The Portent (1864)

      4.Adela Cathcart (1864)

      5.Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

      6.Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

      7.Robert Falconer (1868)

      8.Guild Court (1868)

      9.The Seaboard Parish (1868)

      10.At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

      11.Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

      12.The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

      13.Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

      14.The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

      15.Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

      16.Malcolm (1875)

      17.The Wise Woman (1875)

      18.St. George and St. Michael (1876)

      19.Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

      20.The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

      21.Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

      22.Sir Gibbie (1879)

      23.Mary Marston (1881)

      24.Castle Warlock (1881)

      25.The Princess and Curdie (1882)

      26.Weighed and Wanting (1882)

      27.Donal Grant (1883)

      28.What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

      29.Home Again (1887)

      30.The Elect Lady (1888)

      31.A Rough Shaking (1890)

      32.There and Back (1891)

      33.The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

      34.Heather and Snow (1893)

      35.Lilith (1895)

      36.Salted With Fire (1897)

      37.Far Above Rubies (1898)

      38.George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Progression of a Legacy—The written corpus of George MacDonald’s lifetime writings

      1. PHANTASTES—An inauspicious beginning

      2. DAVID ELGINBROD—"Mr. MacDonald, if you would but write novels"

      3. THE PORTENT—A spooky first novel

      4. ADELA CATHCART—Tales of a Christmas holiday

      5. ALEC FORBES OF HOWGLEN—A little grey town in Aberdeenshire

      6. ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD—A noble calling

      7. ROBERT FALCONER—The great Bob

      8. GUILD COURT—A slice of London life

      9. THE SEABOARD PARISH—Portrait of a family

      10. AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND—Mystical tale for the ages

      11. RANALD BANNERMAN’S BOYHOOD—Memories of happy boyhood

      12. THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN—Forerunner to Narnia

      13. WILFRID CUMBERMEDE—Excursion into the shadows

      14. THE VICAR’S DAUGHTER—Portrait of a lady

      15. GUTTA PERCHA WILLIE—Finding one’s place in the general business

      16. MALCOLM—Glorying in the fountain of existence

      17. THE WISE WOMAN—A double story of the lost princess

      18. ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL—A turbulent history

      19. THOMAS WINGFOLD CURATE—A triumphant quest for truth

      20. THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE—True brotherhood

      21. PAUL FABER SURGEON—The curate and the atheist

      22. SIR GIBBIE—Wee Sir Gibbie—the waif angel

      23. MARY MARSTON—An ideal of God’s daughterhood

      24. CASTLE WARLOCK—An ideal of God’s sonship

      25. THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE—Choices that set the course of character

      26. WEIGHED AND WANTING—A heart of ministry

      27. DONAL GRANT—A Gothic thriller of selfless love

      28. WHAT’S MINE’S MINE—A man of honor

      29. HOME AGAIN—Reminder of a parable

      30.   THE ELECT LADY—The true Church—hearts knit in unity

      31. A ROUGH SHAKING—Quest for the unknown fatherhood

      32. THERE AND BACK—Everything depends on the God you believe in

      33. THE FLIGHT OF THE SHADOW—A double tale

      34. HEATHER AND SNOW—A touching Highland tale

      35. LILITH—Masterpiece or confused anticlimax

      36. SALTED WITH FIRE—The Scots peasant-bard returns

      37. FAR ABOVE RUBIES—A final self-portrait

      Appendix 1—Publication and Edition Notes

      Appendix 2—Selections from A Bibliography of George MacDonald

      Appendix 3—The Evolution of George MacDonald’s Faith, Theology, Writing Style, and Fiction Craft

      AND NOW, AFTER ONE HUNDRED YEARS,

      BECAUSE THERE IS A DESIRE TO KNOW…

      "It was a great pleasure to me to see your letter…What was my disappointment on reading it to find that you requested something from me which I could not give you. I have refused such a request again and again, partly because I dislike the thing so much—partly on personal grounds, partly on principle. A man should keep his shell till he gets his coffin instead—and for my part I trust the outer life of one who has written a good many volumes tending to reveal most that is worth knowing of his inner life, will be forgotten in this world, after he has left it.

      "At all events, my dear Fields will believe that it is for no reason whatever relating to him that I decline to do what he asks of me. On that I am settled and firm. Honestly I do not like or approve of this way of publicizing live people. If anything is left after a hundred years, accompanied by a desire to know, then is soon enough."

      —George MacDonald to James Fields, August 1879, in reply to Field’s request that MacDonald write an autobiography, or consent to having a biography written of him.

      Introduction

      By Michael Phillips

      George MacDonald A Writer’s Life offers a perspective of George MacDonald’s life (1824-1905) viewed through the lens of the written legacy of works he has left to posterity. Our focus is those writings themselves, with special emphasis on his realistic and fantasy novels, and their sequence of writing as they emerged out of the events and circumstances of MacDonald’s life.

      This focus on MacDonald’s fiction is not intended to overlook the significance and value of the other varied genres of MacDonald’s expansive corpus. It simply happens to be the emphasis of this particular work as giving a somewhat unique vantage point from which to assess MacDonald’s life, and from which to most insightfully read his fiction. His sermons, essays, poetry, and short stories wonderfully illuminate MacDonald’s legacy as well.

      My work through the years has focused primarily on MacDonald’s novels and sermons, because that is where I have felt I could do the most good, with revised and updated editions that make MacDonald’s stories and spiritual ideas more accessible to contemporary readers. I have produced six volumes that do that for the sermons. The books of this series will hopefully accomplish that purpose for MacDonald’s fiction, in addition to making them more widely available.

      Eighteen of the volumes in The Cullen Collection are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of edited MacDonald novels published in the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort. Imperfect as those editions were in some respects, they helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

      Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions reflect MacDonald’s originals more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors. Nineteen additional titles have been added. The thirteen realistic novels among these have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six, which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published in so many editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them in this series with the same texts by which they are generally known.

      The books of this series are redacted editions. Redaction is a little-understood term that in our time has come to carry unfortunate implications in the political realm almost synonymous with censorship. When portions of a document are blacked out, it is said to have been redacted. That is actually an incorrect use of the word. Redaction involves the preparation and readying of texts for publication—not simply the elimination of material you don’t want someone else to see. This may involve editing, revising, or condensing, but it is not primarily a function of length. It means preparing texts (revising and updating as needed) for a newly published edition.

      Therefore, I use the term redaction to describe the many varying facets of my work in preparing new editions of MacDonald’s writings for publications. Editing, revising, and updating may be called for, sometimes more, sometimes less. For other titles an introduction and new format is all that is involved.

      Several comprehensive biographies of George MacDonald exist, and numerous smaller ones. The standard work on George MacDonald’s life was published in 1924 by his son Greville, entitled George MacDonald and His Wife. No other major biography was written for over sixty years, until 1987 when two new biographies appeared independently—William Raeper’s George MacDonald, published in the U.K., and my own George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller in the U.S. MacDonald pioneer and scholar, Wheaton College professor Dr. Rolland Hein, added another significant work to this list in 1993 with his George MacDonald, Victorian Mythmaker. It was followed the next year, 1994, by Dr. Glenn Edward Sadler’s biographically organized collection entitled, An Expression of Character: The Letters of George MacDonald. Many other biographical sources exist, and no doubt many will continue to be added as MacDonald studies continue, but these are the major works at the present time.

      This new bibliographic biography is comprised of the introductions to the thirty-seven volumes of The Cullen Collection, presented in the sequence of their original writing. These introductions have a twofold purpose—to give a continuous and sequential perspective of George MacDonald’s life leading up to the writing of the individual books, and to acquaint readers with the background, themes, and uniqueness of each book and its publication. Both these purposes will hopefully allow MacDonald’s writings to be read with greater insight. Using his life’s circumstances to illuminate his work and stringing these introductions together in this final volume of the series, gives an overview of MacDonald’s corpus of fiction works as it grew out of the events of his life. The fiction works, not minutiae of events, remain the focus.

      This life story has a very specific purpose as it moves through MacDonald’s life—that is to shine light on MacDonald’s written works, with special attention focused on his fiction, and to highlight MacDonald’s legacy as one of the Victorian era’s prolific and significant novelists. In what way this somewhat unusual biography may be categorized in a technical sense is unimportant if it serves the objective of illuminating MacDonald’s life and helps us appreciate his written legacy with deeper understanding.

      In writing the thirty-seven introductions for The Cullen Collection, my purpose has been for readers to encounter the unfolding of George MacDonald’s forty-year professional writer’s life in conjunction with a progressive reading of his corpus of fiction. Those years and these introductions span the forty-year period from 1858 to 1898, from the year the first book of this set was published to the year of MacDonald’s final published work. I hope that presenting them in this single volume will also have value for those desiring to read of that life as a continuous whole, perhaps before they turn to the works themselves.

      These two objectives are not necessarily in perfect harmony at every point. Trying to achieve both these distinct purposes—introduce the individual novels in the progression of their writing and publication, and at the same time tell a continuous life story in a single volume—has necessarily resulted in overlap and redundancies.

      Occasional extensive quotes from the novels have value in this writer’s life as giving the flavor of certain books. These selections, however, will be redundant for one who is about to read the novel itself and who will soon encounter the same passage again. In the same way, certain discussions about MacDonald’s use of dialect, for instance, or my own editorial work, or the historical progression of MacDonald studies and publications, may be repeated in different contexts for some of the novels for the benefit of those who may read only that particular book. This again will create inevitable redundancy for those reading this writer’s life as a single continuous story.

      Such overlap cannot be helped given that I am attempting to accomplish two objectives at once—with some material more appropriate for the individual volumes, and other material more appropriate for this overview. I assume readers will be able to intelligently and objectively navigate the anomalies and idiosyncrasies of this unique and ambitious project in conjunction with their own particular reading program.

      Additionally, I am aware that there will be diverse classes of people reading these introductions. Some come to MacDonald primarily for his stories. Others may come to this writer’s life with a keen interest in biographical facts. The first group may find the extensive footnotes distracting and uninteresting, wondering why I am drifting so far into the weeds of detail. Others may be entirely fascinated by the discussion of first editions, or which noted authoress was instrumental in the publication of David Elginbrod, or whether there was in fact a great library in the north in MacDonald’s youth, or in the distinctions between the versions of Robert Falconer, or in the impact of U.S. library editions on MacDonald’s income, or whether or not C.S. Lewis’s perspective of MacDonald as a second-rate novelist holds water, or which is the true first edition of Castle Warlock or Salted With Fire. If you are uninterested in my investigations into such matters, by all means skip the footnotes. If you find such questions fascinating, perhaps you may be one who will be able to provide more information about one or another of the various conundrums that have eluded MacDonald biographers for 100 years!

      Again, everyone will read according to their own interests. I realize that I am trying to be all things to all men, even though I am well aware that no author can please all the people all the time.

      As will be clear as we go along, MacDonald’s books were published in both the U.K. and the U.S., usually (but not always) with the distinctive British spellings (neighbourhood, colour, favourite, labour, etc.) changed in the American editions (to neighborhood, color, favorite, labor). For the novels themselves, and quotes referenced from them, I have preserved most British spellings because that is how MacDonald originally wrote them. (Even these spellings, however, are not always consistent in MacDonald’s originals.) In my introductions, when I am speaking for myself, I use the American spellings because I am an American and that is how I write. In quoting from other books and authors, some British and some American, I obviously retain the usage of the original source.

      This new work emerges out of perspectives presented occasionally in more detail in my own prior work, George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, as well as certain other of my writings. I felt that it would be distracting and redundant to attempt referencing and footnoting every parallel in those books. I have quoted freely and at length, however, from two of my fellow biographers, Rolland Hein and William Raeper, where they offer perspective that sheds light on some aspect of MacDonald’s life that I find especially valuable, and where they provide insight beyond my own. Citations from their books are, of course, fully footnoted.

      None of us who study MacDonald are able to give a complete picture of his life and work. We are all peering back in time through our individual prisms of perspective. Though we are historians and biographers trying to give breadth and depth to the significance of MacDonald’s life, mostly we are interpreters of his life. The perspectives we offer combine and enhance each other. Hopefully, all taken together, they indeed offer a reasonably rounded portrayal of a remarkable man and his huge and diverse life’s work. I am greatly indebted to and appreciative of both Hein’s and Raeper’s insights and extensive research, along with Glenn Sadler’s, and share them along with my own to provide readers a broad panorama of viewpoints, as we all contribute in our own way to breathing new life into this man’s legacy.

      I have quoted frequently from certain other books as well. For the reader’s ease in noting these particular titles, I have dispensed with the scholarly ciphers, which are more mystifying than helpful for the average fiction reader. The following books, which are referenced throughout, will therefore be abbreviated in the footnotes as indicated below rather than with the formal notations of op. cit., loc. cit., ibid., etc.

      Bulloch, Bibliography—A Bibliography of George MacDonald, by John Malcolm Bulloch, The Aberdeen University Library Bulletin, February, 1925, Vol. V, No. 30.

      Greville, Biography—George MacDonald and His Wife by Greville MacDonald, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1924.

      Hein, Mythmaker—George MacDonald, Victorian Mythmaker by Rolland Hein, Star Song Publishing, Nashville, TN, 1993.

      Lewis, Anthology—George MacDonald An Anthology by C.S. Lewis, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1946.

      Phillips, Storyteller—George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller by Michael Phillips, Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis, MN, 1987.

      Raeper, MacDonald—George MacDonald by William Raeper, Lion Publishing, Tring, England, 1987.

      Reis, Fiction—George MacDonald’s Fiction by Richard Reis, originally published as George MacDonald by Twayne Publishers, New York as Volume 119 in Twayne’s English Authors Series, 1972; revised edition published by Sunrise Books, Eureka, CA, 1988 as Volume 3 in the Masterline Series.

      Ronald, Northern—From a Northern Window by Ronald MacDonald, originally published as George MacDonald: A Personal Note, Chapter 3 comprising pp. 55-113 in From a Northern Window, James Nisbet & Co., 1911; reprinted in book form as From a Northern Window, Volume 1 in The Masterline Series, Sunrise Books, Eureka, CA 1989. Page numbers will be given from the Sunrise edition.

      Sadler, Letters—An Expression of Character: The Letters of George MacDonald Edited by Glenn Edward Sadler, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1994.

      Shaberman, Study—George MacDonald, A Bibliographical Study by Raphael B. Shaberman, St. Paul’s Bibliographies, Winchester, Hampshire, U.K., 1990.

      Srebrnik, Strahan—Alexander Strahan: Victorian Publisher, by Patricia Thomas Srebrnik, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1986.

      More on the backgrounds of these new editions, why the series is called The Cullen Collection, and specifics regarding my continuing work in reissuing, redacting, and republishing George MacDonald’s writings, will be detailed in the individual volumes of the series.

      Michael Phillips

      Cullen, Morayshire

      Scotland, 2018

      Progression of a Legacy

      The corpus of George MacDonald’s lifetime writings

      POETRY, ESSAYS, SERMONS, & STORIES

      TWELVE OF THE SPIRITUAL SONGS OF NOVALIS, 1851

      WITHIN AND WITHOUT, 1855

      POEMS, 1857

      THE FICTION OF THE CULLEN COLLECTION

      PHANTASTES, 1858

      DAVID ELGINBROD, 1863

      THE PORTENT, 1864

      ADELA CATHCART, 1864

      A HIDDEN LIFE & OTHER POEMS (Reprint), 1864

      ALEC FORBES OF HOWGLEN, 1865

      DEALINGS WITH THE FAIRIES (Partial Reprint), 1867

      UNSPOKEN SERMONS, 1867

      THE DISCIPLE & OTHER POEMS, 1867

      ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD, 1867

      ROBERT FALCONER, 1868

      GUILD COURT, 1868

      THE SEABOARD PARISH, 1868

      ENGLAND’S ANTIPHON, 1868

      THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD, 1870

      AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND, 1871

      WORKS OF FANCY AND IMAGINATION (Reprints), 1871

      RANALD BANNERMAN’S BOYHOOD, 1871

      THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN, 1872

      WILFRID CUMBERMEDE, 1872

      THE VICAR’S DAUGHTER, 1872

      GUTTA PERCHA WILLIE, 1873

      MALCOLM, 1875

      THE WISE WOMAN, 1875

      EXOTICS, 1876

      DRAMATIC AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS (REPRINTS), 1876

      ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL, 1876

      THOMAS WINGFOLD CURATE, 1876

      THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE, 1877

      PAUL FABER SURGEON, 1879

      SIR GIBBIE, 1879

      THE DIARY OF AN OLD SOUL, 1880

      MARY MARSTON, 1881

      CASTLE WARLOCK, 1881

      THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST & OTHER TALES (Reprints), 1882

      ORTS, 1882

      THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE, 1882

      WEIGHED AND WANTING, 1882

      A THREEFOLD CORD, 1883

      DONAL GRANT, 1883

      THE TRAGEDIE OF HAMLET, 1885

      UNSPOKEN SERMONS, SECOND SERIES, 1885

      WHAT’S MINE’S MINE, 1886

      HOME AGAIN, 1887

      THE ELECT LADY, 1888

      UNSPOKEN SERMONS, THIRD SERIES, 1889

      A ROUGH SHAKING, 1890

      THERE AND BACK, 1891

      A CABINET OF GEMS, 1891

      THE FLIGHT OF THE SHADOW, 1891

      THE HOPE OF THE GOSPEL, 1892

      A DISH OF ORTS (Expanded edition of ORTS), 1893

      THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE MACDONALD (Reprints and new), 1893

      HEATHER AND SNOW, 1893

      LILITH, 1895

      RAMPOLLI, GROWTHS FROM A LONG-PLANTED ROOT (Reprints), 1897

      SALTED WITH FIRE, 1897

      FAR ABOVE RUBIES, 1898

      1858

      An Inauspicious Beginning

      Welcome to The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald.*

      We will approach the books of this series as a whole, made up of thirty-seven individual parts. We recognize that not all readers will read every book in the set. Even fewer will be likely to read them in chronological order. We will nevertheless present the volumes in the progression of their writing as they contribute to a uniform corpus of written works. In this way they will tell not only their individual stories, but also, taken together, will weave a tapestry of the complete life story of their author. It is this singular life that comprises the whole.

      This progressive account of George MacDonald’s writing life will be told, each stage building upon those that came before, in the introductions to the thirty-seven volumes of the series. These introductions trace MacDonald’s literary life through the particular prism of the development of his written works.

      This somewhat unusual approach obviously has advantages and drawbacks. Reading the introductions of the various books in random order may not for some readers produce an altogether cohesive picture of MacDonald’s life. Yet together the volumes weave a complete portrayal of that life.

      For readers who may choose to read only selected titles, yet want to gain an appreciation for the entire flow of MacDonald’s written corpus of works, the complete set of introductions are gathered together in Volume 38 of the series, George MacDonald A Writer’s Life. That progressive biography examines MacDonald’s life through a particular lens—that being the development of his published fiction works. It will have the added benefit of reviewing the backgrounds and high points of each book. Hopefully this will give readers perspective and insight into those titles they haven’t read, and help them decide which they want to read. This new writer’s life is a companion to my more comprehensive biography, George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, first published in 1987 and still readily available in several formats.

      Though the introductions to the titles of The Cullen Collection are progressive, the books themselves may in some cases most fruitfully be read out of the designated order. This volume before us, for instance, though Volume 1 of the set, is actually a poor first choice as an introductory read for one coming to MacDonald for the first time. As MacDonald’s first published work of fiction (and more particularly fantasy), it necessarily represents the initial volume of a progressive series. But in most cases it is best read after one has been steeped in other more user friendly titles. MacDonald wrote Phantastes at the outset of his writing career when he was, in a sense, groping for an authorial style and method and approach. It is not typical of the enormous corpus of work that followed. In my own case, after forty years of writing, my first published title does not represent my life’s work nearly so well as do my later books. The same is true of MacDonald.

      Writers grow and mature and develop in their outlook, in their writing abilities, and in their spiritual perspectives. We have to read MacDonald’s works in that light. His later fiction is far more representative of the true George MacDonald than is this early title.

      For one coming to MacDonald for the first time, I might recommend that you put Phantastes aside for now and read a few other titles first.

      Titles that would be better suited to introduce new readers to MacDonald’s realistic fiction would be Malcolm, Sir Gibbie, Thomas Wingfold Curate, Donal Grant, Alec Forbes of Howglen, and Robert Falconer.

      Titles that will best introduce MacDonald’s fairy tale fiction would be The Princess and the Goblin and The Wise Woman.

      For titles to introduce new readers to MacDonald’s young readers fiction I would recommend At the Back of the North Wind and Gutta Percha Willie.

      And as noted, you might enjoy George MacDonald A Writer’s Life as an overview and to help you decide what to read and in what order.

      And now, as we embark on George MacDonald’s writer’s life and the volumes of The Cullen Collection, let us take a brief bird’s eye view of the events of MacDonald’s biography that led to the writing of Phantastes.

      GEORGE MACDONALD’S BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

      From a long line of the distinguished MacDonald clan, tracing its lineage through the Glencoe massacre of 1692, and the battle of Culloden of 1746, George MacDonald’s Highland roots and Celtic ancestry never left him. All his life, the rich soil of his heritage influenced his world outlook, artistic temperament, imagination, and the spiritual fountainhead of his writings and personhood.

      George was born, the second of six sons, on December 10, 1824, to George MacDonald, Sr. and Helen MacKay MacDonald in the northeast Scottish market town of Huntly. One brother died in infancy, his mother died when he was eight, and a second brother died a year later. George Jr. lost two more brothers when he was in his twenties and thirties. Death came close early in life, and was thus a pivotal theme throughout his later writings. Indeed, his own earliest definable memory, as he recalled it, was of a funeral. ¹ He explored death’s complexities and eternal implications with insight, tenderness, and pathos in many of his writings, always with a hopeful confidence in the Infinite Goodness that lay beyond it.

      Young George’s childhood provided a rich milieu that wove into the tapestry of the future man hues as varied and subtle as the heather that adorned the hills surrounding Huntly. Boyhood escapades intermingled freely with a reflective melancholy that brooded on the nature of God and the meaning of the universe. The autobiographical glimpses into these years from his later writings give us the outgoing, gregarious, mischievous, fun-loving Alec Forbes and Ranald Bannerman, along with Cosmo Warlock’s reflections on the cycle of water giving life to the earth and Robert Falconer’s inquiry into the nature of salvation and the repentance of devils. These and many other fictional images of boyhood from his works combine to characterize the temperament of their author and reveal a multi-faceted picture of his early life in Huntly.

      MacDonald’s distant cousin and son-in-law Edward Troup (husband of his daughter Winifred) wrote in 1924: "The essential truth of George MacDonald’s boyhood will be found in Ranald Bannerman and in Alec Forbes of Howglen—not that, save in a few instances, actual incidents are related: but if you will regard Ranald and Alec as George MacDonald in boyhood, you will know what atmosphere he lived in, what were the conditions and outward circumstances of his life, and what were the influences that formed his character." ²

      MacDonald’s formative years seem to have been shaped by three overspreading (and certainly many lesser) influences. The first was his relationship with his father as a lifelong role model of goodness, and a human-image (obviously flawed but nonetheless real) of the character of God. The second was his relationship with his fiercely rigid and doctrinally unyielding Calvinist grandmother, who, along with aunts and other relatives, helped with daily mothering duties after the death of his mother. His grandmother is a woman vividly portrayed in Robert Falconer.

      These two towering personalities of boyhood—the one of light, the other of darkness—set up the conflict that would largely define George MacDonald’s quest to discover and know the true nature and character of God: Was he a good and loving Father to all mankind and indeed all his creation, or was he an eternally wrathful Judge who would allow the elect into heaven but punish everyone else forever in hell? ³

      C.S. Lewis places these two personalities into perspective, giving an insight that sets us on a path to understanding much in MacDonald’s later writings:

      "An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. He was thus prepared in an unusual way to teach that religion in which the relation of Father and Son is of all relations the most central…

      "His father appears to have been a remarkable man—a man hard and tender and humorous all at once, in the old fashion of Scotch Christianity…his son reports that he never, as a boy or man, asked him for anything without getting what he asked. Doubtless this tells us as much about the son’s character as the father’s…

      "George Macdonald’s [sic] family (though hardly his father) were of course Calvinists. On the intellectual side his history is largely a history of escape from the theology in which he had been brought up. Stories of such emancipation are common in the Nineteenth Century; but…in most such stories the emancipated person, not content with repudiating the doctrines, comes also to hate…his forebears, and even the whole culture and way of life with which they are associated…Of such personal resentment I find no trace in Macdonald [sic]…

      "His own grandmother, a truly terrible old woman who had burnt his uncle’s fiddle as a Satanic snare, might well have appeared to him as…a…sadist. Yet when something very like her is delineated in Robert Falconer and again in What’s Mine’s Mine, we are compelled to look deeper—to see, inside the repellent crust something that we can wholeheartedly pity and even, with reservations, respect." ⁴

      A third influence, not a spiritual one, was the simple boyish delight of freedom—of escape, to use Lewis’s word, from the darkness of his grandmother’s watchful eye and stern theology, escape from the rigid confines of the Sabbath and a cruel schoolmaster and Sunday’s boring sermons, escape into the joy of frolic and play and swimming and fun and laughter. Robert Falconer’s kite and violin are fit symbols of this merriment of boyhood, types of the freedom of the human spirit that yearns to soar both inwardly (the violin) and outwardly (the kite). The escape out of darkness into the light is further epitomized by Alec Forbes’s whooping delight to be let out of school, by the heaven of Robert’s and Shargar’s visits to Mr. Lammie’s farm, and by young George’s real-life holidays to the seashore and frequent visits with aunts, uncles, and cousins in Portsoy and Banff north of Huntly.

      With family and relatives he often visited the village of Cullen five miles west of Portsoy along the North Sea coast. MacDonald’s son-in-law wrote, For their holidays the family went sometimes to the Cabrach, often to one of the coast towns—usually Cullen. ⁵ The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, in a letter home to the Farm in Huntly, probably from Cullen, ⁶ he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, as soon as possible.

      He writes:

      My dear Father,

      It is now time for me to be thinking what I should betake myself to, and tho’ I would be sorry to displease you in any way, yet I must tell you that the sea is my delight and that I wish to go to it as soon as possible, and I hope that you will not use your parental authority to prevent me, as you undoubtedly can. I feel I would be continually wishing and longing to be at sea. Though a dangerous, it is undoubtedly an honest and lawful employment, or I would scorn to be engaged in it. Whatever other things I may have intended were in my childhood days [so] that you can hardly blame me for being flighty in this respect. O let me, dear father, for I could not be happy at anything else. And I am not altogether ignorant of sea affairs, tho’ I have yet a great deal to learn, for I have been studying them for some time back…

      Your affectionate son.

      George. ⁷

      The village of Cullen and its environs, especially the mysterious and eerie ruins of Findlater Castle, seized the youth’s imagination with a love that remained with him, later powerfully portrayed in what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm.

      By the time George MacDonald, Sr. remarried—to Margaret McColl in 1839—his thoughtful son was nearly out from under his grandmother’s Calvinist shadow. George Jr. left for King’s College in Aberdeen the following year, embarking at fifteen on studies in chemistry and physics—or as it was then called, Natural Philosophy. Though already of a poetic bent, his initial career objective was in chemistry, for which he envisioned further studies in Germany.

      STRUGGLES OF FAITH

      Now in a sense on his own, maturing in the intellectually stimulating environment of one of Scotland’s major universities, George MacDonald was soon engaged in the internal quest to know who God is, to know himself, and to know where he and God stood together. Would his grandmother’s Calvinism turn him against a supposed wrathful and unforgiving God into unbelief? Or would the shining example of his father turn him toward a God of goodness and a relationship of intimacy with him? He would spend his university years between 1840 and 1845 trying to answer those questions.

      These were years of spiritual doubt, conflict, and question as he struggled either to find faith or reject it. If the former, he must discover a faith that he could make his own. He must find the true nature of God such that, if indeed he was God, he could believe in him with all his heart. Letters from these years are few. They reveal little about MacDonald’s inner spiritual quest. ⁸ His personal writings between 1845 and 1848, however, looking retrospectively back on his university years, though it is clear he is still trying to place his beliefs into a larger perspective, provide us many windows into his struggles of faith. (See the two footnotes, MacDonald’s Dawning Spirituality After University, and MacDonald’s Application to Highbury.)

      From my own long study of MacDonald’s life and writings, I would identify the following factors that influenced his university years.

      George MacDonald wanted to find a faith of his own. In spite of the harsher elements of its Calvinistic creed, the Christian upbringing in which he had been steeped remained precious to him. He had doubts, but he wanted to know his father’s God, but know him truly and personally. He was not predisposed to reject the Christian faith. His so-called doubts were windows into unknown regions he needed to explore for himself.

      Later in his life he would write, Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to rouse the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood; and theirs in general is the inhospitable reception of angels that do not come in their own likeness. Doubt must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed. ⁹

      Such a time of faith-clarifying knockings characterized the doubts of student George MacDonald’s spiritual search. Until the light broke through, it was a season of anguished melancholy soul-searching. However, he was a young man of emotional extremes. And in the midst of his search, the opposite side of his nature was just as likely to break out in exuberance, exhilaration, and laughter. His was a complex, thoughtful, emotional temperament with balancing extremes of highs and lows.

      Sometime between 1842 and 1843, possibly taking a break from his university schooling, MacDonald is conjectured to have spent some months cataloguing a great library in the north. (The prevailing assumption, based on Greville MacDonald’s biography of his parents, George MacDonald and His Wife, is that it was the library of Thurso Castle, now in ruins, near the northernmost point of mainland Scotland.) This represents one of the mysterious unknowns of MacDonald’s biography about which exists much speculation, including that MacDonald encountered a woman of ambiguous character at the time, and possibly fell in love with her. This episode will be discussed in greater detail in the introductions to The Portent and Alec Forbes of Howglen. Whatever took place, a fascinating array of cunning, deceptive, and cruel women have found their way into the MacDonald corpus, beginning here with Phantastes and continuing all the way to Lilith. Whether these portrayals indeed have roots in whatever took place during MacDonald’s (potential) library interlude, and whether the youthful student was jilted by a flirtatious young woman who became a model for later fictional characters, we will probably never know. But speculation about this possibility is a favorite topic in MacDonald lore and literature. It was also at this time that MacDonald came under the influence of various German writers—possibly discovered in the northern library—including the poet Novalis, and what is loosely termed German Romanticism.

      By the time of MacDonald’s graduation from Aberdeen’s King’s College in 1845 at twenty years of age, his days of serious spiritual doubt and struggle were behind him. His faith had coalesced and solidified. ¹⁰

      The clearest self-portrait left us by MacDonald of those years, detailing the process by which he grew through his doubts into the faith that would sustain him for the rest of his life, comes in the lengthy poem The Disciple. Though not written until long afterward, and published in 1867 in The Disciple and Other Poems, it stands as one of the truly important autobiographical glimpses into the development of faith within George MacDonald’s heart and mind, illuminating his questions and doubts and his road out of them. ¹¹

      MacDonald had by this time abandoned the idea of the sciences (for financial as well as spiritual reasons, his father having suffered financial setbacks, and there were no resources to finance further study). He was now thinking of an academic career—perhaps teaching. Soon thereafter came the idea of the ministry.

      The letters that began to flow from London to his father in Huntly were touching, humble, exhibiting an awareness that he had only begun a life of spirituality, and an eagerness to grow and learn. * His years of question and doubt had not even produced a change of denomination. He remained a Congregationalist, in which church he was raised in Huntly. Though he would not have described it with such a term, to make it understandable in today’s nomenclature, he was still evangelical in his outlook—but, as we shall see, an evangelical with a gradually expanding view of God’s character, methods, and eternal purposes.

      In one of his letters to his father, he refers to a poem he had published in a denominational magazine. It was George MacDonald’s first published piece of writing, entitled David, in which, at twenty years of age, he was already perceiving the father-son relationship, as it clearly stood in his own life, as the foundation of the universe. ¹² Though merely hinting at this core of MacDonald’s future theology, King David’s grief-stricken lament after the death of his son Absalom gives a forerunning glimpse into the progressive development of MacDonald’s perspective of God’s Fatherhood.

      Not knowing what the future held, or what he should do, MacDonald took a position in London tutoring three boys in grammar and arithmetic. His trials through that experience—having to sleep in a room without heat, sicknesses endured alone and far from home, not to mention teaching difficult youngsters—found their way into the tutoring experiences of several future fictional characters. ¹³

      Another early unpublished work of this period (1845-46) is referenced in William Raeper’s biography, simply entitled George MacDonald. Raeper describes it as a blank verse two-act drama much lengthier than David, potentially hinting at MacDonald’s future as a storyteller. It was entitled Gennaro. Raeper identifies several favorite MacDonald themes that will come into his future work—a girl drowning on a ship (North Wind), a young student in a gothic library, and a fascination with the sea. As hugely important as the discovery of such a manuscript would be, no other biographies or bibliographies mention the work. It is referenced nowhere else in the MacDonald literature that I can find. It is not that I am skeptical of Raeper’s research. I trust his work implicitly. Yet without any confirming mention elsewhere, I am reluctant to do more here—though I do so with great fascination—than mention this work in passing. ¹⁴

      More letters from young George MacDonald over the next year indicate that the idea of the ministry was gradually coalescing in his thinking. It is unclear how and when the pastorate first entered his considerations. But within a year or two of his graduation, by 1847, that goal had become his firm career objective. ¹⁵

      Meanwhile, after the move to London from Aberdeen in 1845, George renewed his childhood friendship with cousin Helen MacKay from Banff, with whom he had continued to correspond as the two grew older. In some ways, Helen was MacDonald’s best friend, sounding board, and alter-ego. It was she to whom he poured out his first attempts at poetry during his student years. She was beautiful, full of personality, and whether or not MacDonald actually fell youthfully in love with his cousin, there was certainly a bond of affection between them that lasted all their lives. ¹⁶

      By the time MacDonald sojourned to London to accept his new tutoring assignment, Helen, who had gone to London some years before, was married to Alexander Powell. As the only person he knew in London, it was natural that Helen would bring her cousin into her circle of acquaintances. MacDonald therefore became a regular visitor in the boisterous home of Helen’s Powell in-laws.

      There Louisa Powell, one of six Powell daughters, caught George’s eye. On her part, Louisa was captivated by the mysterious, sometimes mystical, fun-loving and occasionally larger-than-life young Scotsman, her sister-in-law’s cousin, who held occasionally disturbing views. In 1848, after he had satisfactorily acquitted himself, presumably to father and daughter, on the atonement, George asked Mr. Powell to be permitted to offer a proposal of marriage to his daughter. That same year George MacDonald entered Highbury Theological College in London to prepare for a career in the ministry. ¹⁷

      Though Highbury was traditionally evangelical in its orientation, during his years of study George MacDonald’s perspectives widened considerably beyond what would be considered evangelical orthodoxy. (His sharing of his ideas is no doubt the reason why traditionally-minded Mr. Powell insisted on knowing where he stood on the atonement!) He began attending the London lectures of Alexander John Scott, a well-known expansive doctrinal thinker, with whom a deep mentoring friendship resulted. MacDonald toyed briefly with the idea of leaving the Congregational Church and becoming a Unitarian, an idea about which he asked Louisa’s opinion. Her horrified response reveals not only confusion, even self-doubt, but also the degree to which traditional terminology and doctrine dominated Louisa’s outlook. ¹⁸

      In the early years of their relationship, Louisa was uncertain of, possibly even frightened by some of MacDonald’s ideas. She assumed him far beyond her intellectually and spiritually, yet could not but be puzzled by his mysticism and worried about his unconventional views. The rigid fundamentalism of her upbringing clung to Louisa longer than his from Huntly did to George, though obviously over time she grew comfortable with his broader spiritual outlook.

      MacDonald quickly abandoned the idea of becoming a Unitarian, but the incident reveals the directions in which he was slowly moving, as well as the early strains his increasing heterodoxy placed on his relationship with his future wife. Doctrinal controversy would dog him the rest of his life. Yet his widening views also highlight the uniqueness his writings would eventually bring to the Christian faith, illuminating what I have termed a transformational theology. ¹⁹

      Fill-in or supply positions were sought by Highbury’s faculty to provide students experience in the pulpit, either for a single Sunday’s preaching or an extended engagement while a church was between ministers. A number of such preaching assignments came MacDonald’s way. Though he seemed to enjoy them, concerns began to be raised not only about his ideas but also about his preaching style. It seemed that his imaginative, doctrinally-expansive persona came out in his preaching, with whiffs around its edges of the German Romanticism that had taken such hold of him during his student days.

      His professorial mentor at Highbury told him that his manner was too intellectual and poetic. The practical-minded Godwin, writes MacDonald biographer Rolland Hein, felt that the average person in the pew favored a dignified presentation of undisturbing evangelical clichés…Godwin wanted rhetorical polish; MacDonald was striving for a simple, unartificial manner. ²⁰ During one of these preaching assignments he wrote to his father, I often fear I won’t do for a minister. The letters that passed between father and son during these years are touching. MacDonald sought his father’s advice about his preaching and his expanding doctrinal ideas, and George Sr. was equally open and honest in sharing his thoughts, and opening his own spiritual heart to his son. The mutual respect between the two Georges, father and son, is wonderful. ²¹

      MARRIAGE AND A FAILED PASTORATE

      Anticipating the end of his two-year course at Highbury, MacDonald began searching for a permanent ministerial appointment where he and Louisa could begin their life together. An invitation came to preach on a trial basis at the Trinity Congregational Church in Arundel, Sussex, south of London, just inland from the Channel coast. After doing so, MacDonald received a call to become their minister at a salary of £150 a year.* Overjoyed (though he downplayed it to his father, this was a relatively generous offer for an untried young man—the equivalent salary of a Church of England minister), MacDonald accepted and began his pastorate in October of 1850.

      Unfortunately, in what would become a pattern throughout his life, he was struck down by illness the following month. A severe hemorrhage from the lungs forced him to bed. It was during the resulting convalescence that his first serious writing began, a lengthy narrative love poem—obviously with his romance and upcoming marriage to Louisa in mind—that several years hence became Within and Without.

      After his recovery, MacDonald resumed his pastoral duties. At last he and Louisa were able to move ahead with their long-delayed wedding. George and Louisa were married on March 8, 1851 at Hackney in greater London.

      The rest of the year progressed happily. The life of a minister seemed to suit him. Louisa soon became pregnant. The inspiration to write deepening within him, MacDonald was busily working on what would be his first book, a small selection of translations from his favorite poet, the German Novalis. The mystical poeticism of Novalis’s Spiritual Songs, along with the tragic figure of Novalis himself, who had died at twenty-nine of tuberculosis, had gripped MacDonald’s imagination ever since his discovery of Novalis during his university years. He was now able to fulfill the honor he felt toward Novalis by sharing selections of his writings with others.

      With the help of a friend, he had his Novalis translations privately printed and bound. A mere twenty-seven pages in length, he gave the small volume to friends as Christmas gifts at year’s end. He called the booklet Twelve of the Spiritual Songs of Novalis.

      This inauspicious beginning launched George MacDonald’s published literary career.

      His congregation at Arundel, however, was less than overjoyed with MacDonald’s small book. The specific content hardly mattered. It was the fact that Novalis was German. Liberalist German theology was the great boogieman feared by evangelicals of the time.

      Complaints about their young minister’s theology had been whispered even before the book. Beyond the specifics, it was MacDonald’s tone and style. He didn’t sound like an evangelical. He didn’t use the familiar terminology his fundamentalist congregation was comfortable with. MacDonald’s awareness of this fact, and his frustration at not being understood, had come up in letters to his father during his earlier temporary preaching assignments. Now here it was hounding him again.

      The Novalis book ignited an already smoldering fuse of dissatisfaction within Arundel’s leadership. A ruling minority of deacons arranged a meeting with MacDonald a few months after the book’s publication. They told him, regretfully, that church finances were such that they would no longer be able to pay him his full salary. His pay was cut to £115. They hoped MacDonald would take the hint.

      C.S. Lewis explains:

      "The deacons took a roundabout method to get rid of him, by lowering his salary…in the hope that this would induce him to resign. But they had misjudged their man. Macdonald [sic] merely replied that this was bad enough news for him but that he supposed he must try to live on less. And for some time he continued to do so, often helped by the offerings of his poorest parishioners who did not share the views of the more prosperous Deacons. In 1853, however, the situation became impossible." ²²

      Valiantly the MacDonalds struggled on, now with a baby to care for, for another year. The controversies, gossiping, and factions within the church—some supportive, others wanting rid of him—were intolerable for one such as George MacDonald who cherished unity and hated closed-mindedness. The tension finally came to a head. Formal charges were brought. The congregation was summoned. Meetings ensued. MacDonald was formally called upon to explain himself.

      The most serious charges MacDonald’s opponents set forth against him were two:

      That he had expressed the belief that some redemptive provision for the heathen might be made after death, and that his views were tainted with German Theology. The first was heresy plain and simple. The second was heresy by innuendo. Of lesser concern was his expressed belief that the souls of animals were immortal and would share in the afterlife. If this belief was not exactly heresy, it was certainly an unconventional notion.

      Finally, by then with two daughters at home, George MacDonald resigned from the Arundel pulpit. It was the first and last such position he would occupy. ²³

      The next two years were discouraging and financially difficult. The young MacDonald family moved to Manchester, to be near MacDonald’s older brother Charles, and perhaps more significantly following MacDonald’s spiritual mentor A.J. Scott, who had relocated to Manchester two years earlier. In the northern industrial city MacDonald scrapped together a sparse living tutoring, lecturing, and preaching to a small group of friends who gathered about him. Most importantly, he kept writing, gradually managing to publish a few poems and one story, The Broken Swords, which was printed in the magazine Monthly Christian Spectator. Eventually he finished his narrative poem Within and Without. He sent it around to several London publishers only to receive rejections in return.

      A WRITER’S LIFE BEGINS

      Unexpectedly in early 1855 came a letter from Longman, Brown, Green—one of England’s most prestigious publishers to whom the manuscript had been sent—offering to publish the book. All at once MacDonald’s optimism ran high.

      Dedicated to Louisa, Within and Without appeared in May of 1855. The financial reward of publication was negligible, probably no more than £25 or £30 for the copyright. But the book opened that summer to good sales and the reviews were enthusiastic. The Scotsman, the most literary of the newspapers, wrote: This strange and original drama is full of the most exquisite poetry sustained at the pitch of sublimity with immense yet apparently effortless power…A very remarkable production of intellect and heart united as perhaps they seldom have been before… ²⁴

      Along with Alexander John Scott, two more individuals came into MacDonald’s life almost simultaneously to the publication of Within and Without, both of whom would play significant roles in his future. Early in that same year he attended a lecture by Frederick Denison Maurice. A mentoring friendship began, along with the similar influence of Scott, that would encourage and reassure MacDonald in refining his perspectives, especially concerning hell, the afterlife, and the eternally redeeming forgiveness of God’s Fatherhood.

      Later in the year, Lady Noel Byron, widow of poet Lord Byron, deeply moved by Within and Without, wrote to MacDonald, then to her friends encouraging them to buy the book. A warm correspondence followed between MacDonald and Lady Byron. Gradually she became aware of the MacDonalds’ financial straits and George’s health problems. She began seeking ways to help the young poet. Her first financial gift was a modest £25 (though not that modest—the equivalent of two months of a minister’s salary). She was not a wealthy woman, though continued to give £25 or £50 to the family periodically over the next few years. She also lent her encouragement and the support of her reputation to widen MacDonald’s sphere of acquaintances and opportunities.

      That same year MacDonald was offered another pulpit, this time in Bolton north of Manchester. Not having yet given up on the ministry, he planned to accept it. Again, however, he was struck down by an even more serious hemorrhage of the lungs. Fate, it seemed, did not want George MacDonald pastoring as a profession.

      For some time MacDonald lay near death. As he began to turn the corner, Louisa made arrangements for her ailing husband to winter in the much warmer climate of Devon. MacDonald had no choice but to turn down the Bolton offer. Again he used his convalescence to write. Poetry had always been his chosen genre. Nearly all his writing till then was poetry. To follow Within and Without, he now began another lengthy and occasionally autobiographical poem entitled A Hidden Life.

      Not only were MacDonald’s finances of concern to Lady Byron, so too was his precarious health. She suggested that George and Louisa should leave Manchester, with its cold damp winters, for good. Enlisting the financial help of the Scotts, she helped arrange for the MacDonalds to spend the winter of 1856-57 in Algiers, leaving three of their growing brood of four with friends and relatives, taking only frail three-year-old Mary with them. These months abroad set patterns in motion that would become permanent for the MacDonalds. There would often be a necessity of having to live separate lives for short periods of time, with some of the children cared for by various relatives. And once the benefits of the Mediterranean to MacDonald’s health was realized, travel back and forth to warmer climes also became regular. He would never live in the north again. The Manchester chapter of his life thus came to an end. ²⁵

      On the heels of the success of Within and Without, a volume simply entitled Poems was accepted for publication, again by Longmans. In addition to featuring A Hidden Life, the compilation included MacDonald’s poem about an eerie legend of Cullen’s Findlater Castle entitled, A Story of the Sea Shore, as well as many others, and was released in the summer of 1857. The dedication of the volume to his father is touching.

      To My Father

      Take of the first fruits, Father, of thy care,

      Wrapped in the fresh leaves of my gratitude

      Late waked for early gifts ill understood;

      Claiming in all my harvests rightful share,

      Whether with song that mounts the joyful air

      I praise my God; or, in yet deeper mood,

      Sit dumb because I know a speechless good,

      Needing no voice, but all the soul for prayer.

      Thou hast been faithful to my highest need;

      And I, thy debtor, ever, evermore,

      Shall never feel the grateful burden sore.

      Yet most I thank thee, not for any deed,

      But for the sense thy living self did breed

      That fatherhood is at the great world’s core.

      All childhood, reverence clothed thee, undefined,

      As for some

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1