George MacDonald's Fantasy Novels

George MacDonald is famous for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels. He was a great inspiration to many writers of his time including C. S. Lewis, who wrote "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later, I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton said that The Princess and the Goblin was a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence." His four best known fantasy novels for adults, are available here in one volume. The Light Princess is cursed by a witch and loses her "gravity" becoming silly, having neither physical nor spiritual weight. This is an engaging story that teaches us about the beauty of sacrificial love. In Cross Purposes the fairy Peaseblossom and the goblin Toadstool set off to lure a girl and a boy to Fairyland because the Queen is bored - her subjects are too well-behaved to be amusing. In Phantastes a young man finds himself on a long journey through a fantasy land on a quest that must end with the ultimate joyful surrender of the self. In Lilith the hero follows an old man through a mirror and nothing in his life is ever the same again.