Authors and After Words

The biographical descriptions of the life of George MacDonald (1824-1905) will vary greatly depending on the source. In 1969, Ballantine Books introduced the re-publication of a series of adult fantasies with MacDonald’s second such work, Lilith, written late in his life in 1895. This was followed in 1970 with MacDonald’s first adult fantasy, Phantastes, which he wrote much earlier in 1858. As editorial consultant for the Ballantine series, Lin Carter described MacDonald’s life in the following manner:

Other sources, however, will point out that MacDonald never fully recovered from the early death of his mother, that his father was fair and generous but also strict and undemonstrative, that he may have had a troubled early romance with a cousin that colored his image of women for the rest of his life, that he and his family were troubled with tuberculosis to the very end, taking four of his children along the way, and that, having been fired from his first and only congregation for his arguably heretical theology, he was to struggle financially for the rest of his life, frequently receiving more than a little help from his friends, even though he did attain a degree of fame, if not fortune, from his literary endeavors.

His authorship was plagued by the fact that he was forced, for economic reasons, to write away from his visionary strengths, favoring the fashionably "realistic" novels read so eagerly by the Victorian middle class readers. His best books, however, have survived in publication into our own time. More over, he was deeply admired by W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Lewis, in fact, held MacDonald above all others in influence.

Although MacDonald lost his first and only pastoral appointment, he continued to preach whenever he got the chance throughout his life, and it was C. S. Lewis who edited his sermons for publication. Lewis went on to extract what he considered the best of MacDonald’s thoughts – 365 of them – which he published as an anthology for daily meditation. Regarding MacDonald’s fantasy writing, he said, "What he does best is fantasy – fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic…Most myths are made in prehistoric times, and I suppose not consciously made by individuals at all. But every now and then there occurs in the modern world a genius – a Kafka or a Novalis – who can make such a story. MacDonald is the greatest genius of this kind whom I know." Just how did this "mythopoeic" genius manifest itself and where has it survived?

First, we need to remind ourselves that before the nineteenth century, nearly, if not all fiction was presented as "virtual history," that is, something that happened at some time and some where "out there" – "Once upon a time in a kingdom far away…" as we say. In other words, the horizon of the make-believe world of story telling was far, far away. Through the course of time, however, as we passed through the Enlightenment towards Realism, that horizon appeared closer and closer to our own world until, with the development of a descriptive science of mind, that horizon became internalized in both the personal "stream of consciousness" and in the dreams and visions of the fictional sub-conscious mind. Then, upon further exploration, these themes, visions and images were once again opened up by the exploration of universal themes and archetypal patterns. It was this newly discovered and internalized capacity for dramatizing dream visions that MacDonald explored in both his first and last "fantasy" novels for adults – Phantastes and Lilith. Both are still in print.

In his children’s books, The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and its sequel, The Princess and Curdie (1883), both of which are also still in print, he tends towards the older fashion, holding the horizons farther off and away. But in the surviving shorter works, mostly labeled fairy tales, especially in "The Wise Woman" and "The Golden Key" he is once again telling stories that are closer in mind and spirit, both more internalized, more "psychological" and more visionary, symbolic, and "mythic." Finally, in his masterpiece, At the Back of the North Wind (1871), MacDonald fuses both the interior and the exterior horizon in a story of life, death, and ultimate faith in resurrection – a symbolic representation of his own spiritual journey.

It is this new practice of story telling that comes out of tradition but also calls up the teller’s own mythic and archetypal experience and imagination, his own psychic and spiritual journey, that so beguiled C. S. Lewis. MacDonald’s discovery that the broad horizon of "Once upon a time…" lies both without and within each one of us serves only to enrich us all.