The Gold Thread: Essays on George MacDonald

Both children's literature and fantasy literature have become established as genre for critical study in recent years, especially in the United States. As one of the outstanding children's authors of the nineteenth century and a pioneer of fantasy writing, MacDonald has become the focus of increased attention. As an acknowledged influence on many authors who came after him--authors such as E. Nesbit, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and T. S. Eliot--MacDonald is one of the rare writers whose work is a starting point for evaluating the achievements of others. New forms of critical theory--Jungian, psychoanalytic, and feminist--turning towards the exploration of sexuality and the fantastic have also found fitting subjects in MacDonald's texts. This volume studies these developments and also the growing acknowledgment that MacDonald was a Scottish writer and a Victorian. His enduring works have been his children's books At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and the fairy tales of The Golden Key. His two adult fantasy novels, Phantasties and Lilith, are now recognized as classics of their kind.