The Complete Fairy Tales

George MacDonald occupied a major position in the intellectual life of his Victorian contemporaries, and his dazzling fairy tales earned him the admiration of such twentieth-century writers as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and W. H. Auden. Employing paradox, play, and nonsense, like Lewis Carroll`s Alice books, MacDonald`s fairy tales offer an elusive yet meaningful alternative order to the dubious certitudes of everyday life. The Complete Fairy Tales brings together all eleven of George MacDonald`s shorter fairy tales, including

The Light Princess

and

The Golden Key,

as well as his essay

The Fantastic Imagination.

The subjects are those of traditional fantasy: fairies good and wicked, children embarking on elaborate quests, journeys into unsettling dreamworlds, life-risking labors undertaken. Though they allude to familiar tales such as

Sleeping Beauty

and

Jack the Giant-Killer,

MacDonald`s stories are profoundly experimental and subversive. By questioning the concept that a childhood associated with purity, innocence, and fairy-tale

wonder

ought to be segregated from adult skepticism and disbelief, they invite adult readers to adopt the same elasticity and open-mindedness that come so naturally to a child.