George MacDonald

The Princess and the Goblin George MacDonald

George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. Bornin Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland [1824-1905]




He was educated at Aberdeen University and after a short and stormy career as a minister at Arundel, where his unorthodox views led to his dismissal, he turned to fiction as a means of earning a living. He wrote over 50 books.




Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, MacDonald inspired many authors, such as G. K. Chesterton, W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master" "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence."




Elizabeth Yates wrote of Sir Gibbie, "It moved me the way books did when, as a child, the great gates of literature began to open and first encounters with noble thoughts and utterances were unspeakably thrilling."