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.

Collection	Narrator	Length
Victorian	Peter Joyce	6 hrs

Media	Compact Disc
Media Qty	5
Audio Format	CD-DA
Book Code	VI-129CD
ISBN	978 1 86015 067 8
Price	£15.99

George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. Though no longer well known, his works (particularly his fairy tales and fantasy novels) have inspired admiration in such notables as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master". G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence". MacDonald was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. His father, a farmer, was one of the MacDonalds of Glen Coe, and a direct descendant of one of the families that suffered in the massacre of 1692. MacDonald grew up influenced by his Congregational Church, with an atmosphere of Calvinism. But MacDonald never felt comfortable and showed a distaste for the Calvinist idea that God's electing love is limited to some and denied to others. After his degree at the University of Aberdeen, he went to London, studying for the Congregational ministry. In 1850 he was appointed pastor of Trinity Congregational Church, Arundel, but his sermons met with little favour and his salary was cut in half. Later he was engaged in ministerial work in Manchester. He left that because of poor health, and after a short sojourn in Algiers he settled in London and taught for some time at the University of London. His best-known works are all fantasy novels and fairy tales. "I write, not for children," he wrote, "but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five." MacDonald also served as a mentor to Lewis Carroll

Click here to find out more about George MacDonald.

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