The Bicentennial of George MacDonald

Photographed by Lewis Carroll, 1852

Two hundred years ago today, 10 December 1824, George MacDonald was born in Huntley, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He is remembered for classic original fairy tales ("The Golden Key", "The Light Princess", etc.),  children's novels (The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, etc. ), and the two adult fantasy novels that bookend his career (Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women, and Lilith). His writings inspired David Lindsay, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C .S. Lewis, among others.

This year also marks the centenary of the first major biography of him, George MacDonald and His Wife, by his son, Greville MacDonald. George MacDonald died on 18 September 1905, in Ashtead, Surrey, England, at the age of eighty. 

Wormwoodiana today tips the hat in remembrance of MacDonald. I show a few of my own shelves of MacDonald books, one of criticism, the other of a large selection of his collected works, as put out in fine cloth-bound editions by Johannesen Printing and Publishing of California in the 1990s. Most notable of their editions is a two volume Variorum Edition of Lilith, publishing for the first time multiple manuscript versions. At bottom I have reproduced MacDonald's bookplate from Greville MacDonald's book. 

The Allison & Busby Fantasic Fiction Library

In October 1986, three books appeared in trade paperback in the UK, inaugurating the "Allison & Busby Fantastic Fiction Library." Each gives unadorned texts, without any extra matter such as informed introductions or interior illustrations.  Each of the three books uses a piece of art (or a portion thereof) from the previous century as cover art.  The art is not especially compatible with the book on which it appears, but it isn't horrendously incompatible either.  The books are:


Lilith, by George Macdonald, with the cover art from "Pandora" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 
The Purple Cloud, by M.P. Shiel, with cover art from"The Scapegoat" by William Holman Hunt


A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay, with cover art "The Glacier of Rosenlaui" by John Brett.  Sadly the text of the novel, though re-set, follows that of the corrupt 1963 Macmillan edition, which was line-edited by the publisher, resulting in literally thousands of changes—some merely punctuational but a large number are word changes and rephrasings that alter Lindsay's text.


And with these initial releases, the series died. Alas. Allison & Busby had been founded in 1967 by Clive Allison and Margaret Busby.  In 1987 the firm was acquired by W.H. Allen, Ltd. According to Margaret Busby this represented "finally succumbing to the exigencies of being penniless."  Whether the fantasy series died before or after the acquisition is not known.