Preface

Preface

Sulking was not something I often did as a child, but that day I sulked, lying on my bunk in the little room my brother and I shared, pushing the mattress above me up and down with my feet. I rolled over and looked at the bookshelf, where I noticed the green and gold spine of a book I had never yet read. One of my mother’s students gave it to me, as it had been her favorite book as a child. After admiring the beautiful cover illustration, I started in on the story. Not until I finished the book, The Princess and Curdie, did I put it down.

The next day I scoured our family bookshelf for anything by George MacDonald, coming across The Golden Key and reading it before the day was out. At age fourteen I named my puppy Curdie, and, though drawing never came to me easily, scribbled little mattocks and imaginings of the creature Lina in all my school notebooks. I also began writing stories, something I had not done since preschool. Soon a family friend gave me A George MacDonald Treasury, where I first read The Giant’s Heart, The Light Princess, and Lilith. During my first week at Junior College, I searched the school library for any of MacDonald’s writing which I had not read, coming across The History of Photogen and Nycteris. The list of stories goes on, and when it came time for me to write something, that something simply had to be about the stories of George MacDonald.

Honestly, I cannot take credit for the topic of this study. Only through writing it have I discovered how much of a fiction writer, as opposed to a nonfiction writer, I truly am. For hours I ambled about with thoughts in my head, trying and failing to put into words what it is about MacDonald’s stories which affected me so very much like a walk through a beautiful landscape, where one cannot help but know that there is a God and He is good. Eventually I gave up with my own grasp of language and called the friend to whom this study is dedicated. After hearing my dilemma he said, “All of MacDonald’s stories are about an awakening, where a character says, ‘I will arise and go to my Father.’”

  So here I sit at my desk, with a painting of Lina in the rosefire, a gift from another friend, on the wall behind me, and George MacDonald’s writings stacked high beside a cup of tea.  Of his stories, MacDonald wrote, “So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.”  I fear that Mr. MacDonald would be rather annoyed with me for attempting to clarify how exactly his dog barks.  If any of my readers have not read MacDonald’s stories, I entreat them to do so at once.  Of any bit of this little study which leads to fuller understanding or enjoyment of MacDonald’s stories, or gives a knowing smile to like-minded readers, I am glad.