SOURCE: "Sacred and Secular Visions of Imagination and Reality in Nineteenth-Century British Fantasy for Children," in Webs and Wardrobes: Humanist and Religious World Views in Children's Literature, edited by Joseph O'Beirne Milner and Lucy Floyd Morcock Milner, University Press of America, 1987, pp. 66-78.

In the essay below, Moss contrasts the versions of fantasy offered by Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald Moss describes MacDonald's fantasy land as one in which the child characters must rely on a divine power for guidance, while Carroll's child characters depend on and mature through their own intelligence.'

Writing classic British children's fantasies in the 1860's and 1870's, George MacDonald and Lewis Carroll essentially established the traditions of modern fantasy. Though they were personal friends and admired one another's work, these two writers held profoundly different views of reality. MacDonald, strongly influenced by Romantic conceptions of childhood and imagination, saw the universe as...