SOURCE: “The Fairy Tales of George MacDonald and the Evolution of a Genre,” in For the Childlike: George MacDonald's Fantasies for Children, The Children's Literature Association and The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992, pp. 31-49.

In the following essay, Mendelson provides a close reading of three fairy tales that are exemplary of MacDonald's use of the genre.

My intention here is to provide an overview of George MacDonald's fairy canon. I will approach this task by first examining the relation between these fairy tales and MacDonald's other literary output, most notably his critical essays and his adult fantasies. Following this general orientation, I will look more closely at narrative elements in three individual tales—“The Light Princess,” “The Golden Key,” and The Princess and the Goblin—that are indicative of MacDonald's fairy tale technique. In the process of this survey, I hope to explore the topology of MacDonald's fairy-land and...