George MacDonald
George MacDonald's Books(7)
The Princess and the Goblin
Fantasy Revolutionary for the time in encouraging children to think like children, the adventure of Princess Irene and Curdie, the boy miner, was to influence generations of writers, including Chesterton and Tolkien. Overflowing with fantastic ideas and images to delight the young and allegory to inspire their morality The Princess and the Goblin has remained one of the most exciting tales for over 100 years. Irene lives in a castle on a mountain under which there is a labyrinth of tunnels inhabited by Goblins. Also, within the hillsides, is a group of miners digging for precious metals. When the Goblins try to kidnap the Princess and flood the mines it is up to Curdie, the boy miner, and Irene's great-great-great grandmother to use their wit and resource to defeat the wicked plan.
'I for one can really testify to a book that has made a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start; ... of all the stories I have read, it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life. It is called The Princess and the Goblin, and is by George MacDonald...' —G. K. Chesterton Sir Gibbie
Literature "Come oot o' the gutter, ye nickum!" cried, in harsh, half-masculine voice, a woman standing on the curbstone of a short, narrow, dirty lane, at right angles to an important thoroughfare, itself none of the widest or cleanest. She was dressed in dark petticoat and print wrapper. One of her shoes was down at the heel, and discovered a great hole in her stocking. Had her black hair been brushed and displayed, it would have revealed a thready glitter of grey, but all that was now visible of it was only two or three untidy tresses that dropped from under a cap of black net and green ribbons, which looked as if she had slept in it. Robert Falconer
Young Adult Robert Falconer, school-boy, aged fourteen, thought he had never seen his father; that is, thought he had no recollection of having ever seen him. But the moment when my story begins, he had begun to doubt whether his belief in the matter was correct. And, as he went on thinking, he became more and more assured that he had seen his father somewhere about six years before, as near as a thoughtful boy of his age could judge of the lapse of a period that would form half of that portion of his existence which was bound into one by the reticulations of memory. For there dawned upon his mind the vision of one Sunday afternoon. Betty had gone to church, and he was alone with his grandmother, reading The Pilgrim's Progress to her, when, just as Christian knocked at the wicket-gate, a tap came to the street door, and he went to open it. There he saw a tall, somewhat haggard-looking man, in a shabby black coat (the vision gradually dawned upon him till it reached the minuteness of all these particulars), his hat pulled down on to his projecting eyebrows, and his shoes very dusty, as with a long journey on foot—it was a hot Sunday, he remembered that—who looked at him very strangely, and without a word pushed him aside, and went straight into his grandmother's parlour, shutting the door behind him. He followed, not doubting that the man must have a right to go there, but questioning very much his right to shut him out. When he reached the door, however, he found it bolted; and outside he had to stay all alone, in the desolate remainder of the house, till Betty came home from church... You might like
The Princess and the Goblin
George MacDonald Revolutionary for the time in encouraging children to think like children, the adventure of Princess Irene and Curdie, the boy miner, was to influence generations of writers, including Chesterton and Tolkien. Overflowing with fantastic ideas and images to delight the young and allegory to inspire their morality The Princess and the Goblin has remained one of the most exciting tales for over 100 years. Irene lives in a castle on a mountain under which there is a labyrinth of tunnels inhabited by Goblins. Also, within the hillsides, is a group of miners digging for precious metals. When the Goblins try to kidnap the Princess and flood the mines it is up to Curdie, the boy miner, and Irene's great-great-great grandmother to use their wit and resource to defeat the wicked plan.
'I for one can really testify to a book that has made a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start; ... of all the stories I have read, it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life. It is called The Princess and the Goblin, and is by George MacDonald...' —G. K. Chesterton 
