This post on Scottish author and clergyman George MacDonald (1824-1905) may be a Travalanche first: a post about an artist whose work I don’t know at all.
We take the risk on account of the bicentennial benchmark obviously and because so many authors with whose writing I am very familiar are said to have been influenced by MacDonald. Many scholars and aficionados of the fantasy genre consider him its father, and he was one of the Victorian era’s primary authors of fairy tales. I had not heard of, let alone consumed, any of MacDonald’s books, and yet it is told that he left his mark on Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Madeleine L’Engle. MacDonald’s friendship with John Ruskin leads me to suspect that his writings also informed Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales. George MacDonald Fraser (born a century later) is almost certainly named after him. And his grandson, Philip MacDonald was an author and screenwriter whose work I know very well indeed. We’ll return to him.
Oh, and I just found this on my wife’s shelf, so I reckon that’s the one I’ll start with, though too late for this post:
MacDonald was raised in a highly literary family, with grandparents, uncles, cousins on both sides who steeped him in Celtic (Scottish Gaelic) culture, language, and mythology. One uncle was a Shakespeare scholar. MacDonald studied chemistry and physics at King’s College, Aberdeen, but was drawn to the church, becoming a Congregational clergyman in 1850. MacDonald’s religious upbringing was extremely eclectic, leading him to very unorthodox and independent theological views. One grandfather was a Catholic born Presbyterian, a step-grandfather was a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church, an aunt was active in the Free Church of Scotland, a grandmother was an Independent. MacDonald was a raised in the strictly Calvinist Congregational faith, but it was a time of turmoil, when Evangelicalism was causing schisms in Scotland’s established churches. MacDonald’s own views were too liberal for his own flocks and he only ministered for about three years, although he continued to publish sermons, theological tracts and devotional works throughout his life. From 1879 to 1900, while living as an expat in Italy (mostly for his health), he attended a local Anglican church.
Obviously faith and spirituality are consonant with imagination, and this is where MacDonald’s two lives cross over. Among his scores of book length works among his better known and more significant include Within and Without: A Dramatic Poem (1855, his first book-length work), the German Romantic influenced Phantastes (1858), David Elginbrod (1862. his first work of realism), Robert Falconer, (1868), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), and Lilith (1895). By virtual of its title, I find myself particularly interested in The Portent : A Story of the Inner Vision of the Highlanders, Commonly Called the Second Sight (1864) (For some reason, some people believe that the Scots possess psychic tendencies. Somehow this ability has never enabled them to pin down the whereabouts of the Loch Ness Monster!). Like Hans Christian Anderson, MacDonald crafted his own fairy tales. Among them are “The Light Princess”, “The Golden Key”, and “The Wise Woman”.
MacDonald and his family (including his children) are said to have been instrumental in encouraging the publication of family friend Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The MacDonalds had an active social life, wherein many prominent Victorian figures like Tennyson, Arnold, Carlyle, and Rossetti, along with folks from all walks of life were invited to their home and regaled with amateur theatricals. MacDonald toured America on the Lyceum circuit 1872-73, extemporizing lectures on Shakespeare and Burns, entertaining thousands, and befriending the likes of Longfellow, Emerson, Whitman, and Mark Twain.
Later, the likes of E.H. Shepherd and Maurice Sendak would illustrate his works. His most notable modern fan is Neil Gaiman.
MacDonald’s eldest son Greville (1856-1944), one of those early readers of Alice in Wonderland, went on to become a physician and an author himself, with the same sort of eclectic output as his father, ranging from non-fiction to original children’s books. Today his best known work is George MacDonald and his Wife (1924) for obvious reasons. He also wrote a book called The Sanity of William Blake (1920)!
George’s grandson Philip MacDonald (1900-1980) seems much more influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle than his own grandad. (Ironically, Doyle literally believed in fairies! I doubt that’s true of any of the MacDonalds). Philip was the author of many whodunits and locked room mysteries. He’s probably best known for The List of Adrian Messenger (1959), which was made into a film by John Huston in 1963. MacDonald wrote the screenplays for many Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto Pictures, as well as such things as The Body Snatcher (1945) with Val Lewton. Scores of movies were based upon his works. Oddly, I don’t know of any movies based on the works of his grandfather!
For much more on this intriguing figure, see the official website of The George MacDonald Society, as well as The Works of George MacDonald and The George MacDonald Informational Web. So he obviously has a cult, if I’m late in joining it. The histories of the Stewarts and the MacDonalds have been entwined for centuries, and my real first name being that of their clan, it would seem obligatory for me to do so.