Search Worlds Without End

A Victorian fairy tale that has enchanted readers for more than a hundred years: the magical story of Diamond, the son of a poor coachman, who is swept away by the North Wind -- a radiant, maternal spirit with long, flowing hair -- and whose life is transformed by a brief glimpse of the beautiful country "at the back of the north wind." It combines a Dickensian regard for the working class of mid-19th-century England with the invention of an ethereal landscape.

After he followed the old man through the mirror, nothing in his life was ever right again. It was a special mirror, and the man he followed was a special man -- a man who led him to the things that underlie the fate of all creation.

In October 1857, George MacDonald wrote what he described as "a kind of fairy tale, in the hope that it will pay me better than the more evidently serious work." This was Phantastes -- one of MacDonald's most important works; a work which so overwhelmed C. S. Lewis that a few hours after he began reading it he knew he "had crossed a great frontier."

The book is about the narrator's (Anodos) dream-like adventures in fairyland, where he confronts tree-spirits and the shadow, sojourns to the palace of the fairy queen, and searches for the spirit of the earth. The tale is vintage MacDonald, conveying a profound sadness and a poignant longing for death.

Contents:

• ix - About Evenor and George MacDonald: The Dubious Land - essay by Lin Carter
• 1 - Editor's Note (The Wise Woman) - essay by Lin Carter
• 3 - The Wise Woman - (1875) - novella by George MacDonald (variant of The Wise Woman, or The Lost Princess: A Double Story)
• 117 - Editor's Note (The Carasoyn) - essay by Lin Carter
• 119 - The Carasoyn - (1871) - novelette by George MacDonald
• 175 - Editor's Note (The Golden Key) - essay by Lin Carter
• 177 - The Golden Key - (1867) - novelette by George MacDonald

Young Princess Irene, sent away to the country to be raised in a place nestled into the side of a mountain that's half farmhouse and half castle, has stumbled into a conspiracy -- of Goblins! Really, Goblins! Their evil plot threatens the king and his palace and of course Irene and her friend and her great-great-grandmother (who is a witch, just for good measure). This book has been famous fun for generations, and you ought to come see why. Highly recommended. Anne Thaxter Eaton writes in A Critical History of Children's Literature that The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel "quietly suggest in every incident ideas of courage and honor." Jeffrey Holdaway, in the New Zealand Art Monthly, said that both books start out as "normal fairytales but slowly become stranger", and that they contain layers of symbolism similar to that of Lewis Carroll's work.

In this sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, Curdie has returned to his life as a miner and has dismissed the supernatural happenings of the past, believing them to have been a dream. When Curdie callously wounds a pigeon, his conscience leads him to Princess Irene's mystical great-great-grandmother for help. She has him plunge his hands into a pile of rose petals that burns like fire. Extraordinarily, this grants him the power to see what kind of "animal" a person is at heart.

She then sends him on a quest, accompanied by a peculiar doglike creature named Lina, who was once a human. However, Curdie must resolve his own skepticism before he can use the powers granted to him to defeat the evil that is threatening the future of the kingdom.