George MacDonald (1824-1905), the great nineteenth-century innovator of modern fantasy, influenced not only C. S. Lewis but also such literary masters as Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien. Though his longer fairy tales Lilith and Phantastes are particularly famous, much of MacDonald's best fantasy writing is found in his shorter stories. In this volume editor Glenn Sadler has compiled some of MacDonald's finest short works - marvelous fairy tales and stories certain to delight readers familiar with MacDonald and those about to meet him for the first time. Madeleine L'Engle Surely George MacDonald is the grandfather of us all - all of us who struggle to come to terms with truth through fantasy. W. H. Auden George MacDonald is pre-eminently a mythopoeic writer. In his power to project his inner life into images, beings, landscapes which are valid for all, he is one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century. C. S. Lewis What George MacDonald does best is fantasy-fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man.
