The fairytales finally available in modern scholarly edition
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This new edition of MacDonald's fairytales is the first I've come across which aims to offer an accessible yet scholarly detailed edition of MacDonald's fairytales. Given that McGillis' editions of the children's novels are now out of print, I was delighted to discover that someone still sees the value of publishing his work in an affordable and student-friendly format. Knoepflmacher's introduction is excellent, and serves to locate MacDonald's fairytales within his own corpus as well as indicating their place with the tradition interest in the fairytales in the nineteenth-century, stemming from the Grimm Brother's first publication in 1812 and gaining ground throughout the intellectual revival via MacDonald, Ruskin and a number of other Victorian notables in the mid-century. Knoepflmacher's notes are also most intelligent, and he has a keen awareness of MacDonald's slightly uneasily innovative strain; I am particularly fond of the story of Ruskin's reaction to the swimming scenes in `The Light Princess'! This is a long-awaited addition to the growing MacDonald library, and I hope that perhaps in the not too distant future some of MacDonald's other writing `for the childlike' might be returned to us in a similar form.
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Great!
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I discovered George McDonald with Phantastes, an allegory about a young man's journey through Faerie, which is still my favourite book . However, many of his fairy tales still touch my heart and he'll always be amongst the writers I like most. He was a great influence to writers such as C.S. Lewis. It was time a good recopilation of his fairy tales appeared. If you're fond of fairy tales, this is a book you will surely enjoy regardless of your age.
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