THE LIGHT PRINCESS When the Light Princess was born, somebody screwed up an invitation to her christening and left out her evil aunt. Who was a witch! That evil aunt vented her spleen by casting a spell on the Princess that left her immune to gravity. Which was a strange (and often inconvenient!) way for things to be -- more than once the wind caught hold of her while she slept, and you can go the most amazing places on the wind if you have no weight. Then, when the princess got to be a young woman, she met a young prince and fell in love -- and the results of that love are the very essence of this tale . . . "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master . . . The quality that had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live." -- C.S. Lewis on George Macdonald
George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.
Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence."
Even Mark Twain, who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald.
MacDonald grew up influenced by his Congregational Church, with an atmosphere of Calvinism. But MacDonald never felt comfortable with some aspects of Calvinist doctrine; indeed, legend has it that when the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him, he burst into tears (although assured that he was one of the elect). Later novels, such as Robert Falconer and Lilith, show a distaste for the idea that God's electing love is limited to some and denied to others.
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