George MacDonald - Phantastes (A Novel)

This week marks the anniversary of the death of Scottish pastor and novelist, George MacDonald …

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This week’s FREE ebook download is perhaps the most celebrated novel by George MacDonald :

Phantastes: A Novel
by George MacDonald

George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet and Christian minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll. In addition to his fairy tales, MacDonald wrote several works on Christian apologetics.

His writings have been cited as a major literary influence by many notable authors including Lewis Carroll, W. H. Auden, J. M. Barrie, Oswald Chambers, Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, T.H. White, Richard Adams, Lloyd Alexander, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, E. Nesbit, Peter S. Beagle, Neil Gaiman and Madeleine L’Engle.

C. S. 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.”

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women is a fantasy novel by Scottish writer George MacDonald, first published in London in 1858. The story centers on the character Anodos (“pathless”, or “ascent” in Greek) and takes its inspiration from German Romanticism, particularly Novalis. The story concerns a young man who is pulled into a dreamlike world and there hunts for his ideal of female beauty, embodied by the “Marble Lady”. Anodos lives through many adventures and temptations while in the other world, until he is finally ready to give up his ideals.

C.S. Lewis wrote, concerning his first reading of Phantastes at age sixteen, “That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me[,] not unnaturally, took longer. I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.” (via Wikipedia)