One minute book reviews: George MacDonald
Since in the podcast we are currently working our way through The Great Divorce, I thought it would be advisable to become more familiar with the character of George MacDonald. MacDonald was a minister and writer who greatly influenced C.S. Lewis. Lewis said that reading MacDonald’s Phantastes “baptized” his imagination.
I therefore read George MacDonald: An Anthology, which was assembled by C.S. Lewis. It contains 365 extracts from MacDonald’s work, such as the following:
#262 A Lonely Religion
There is one kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the fewer proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.
It was fascinating to see the themes and threads of thought I have seen in Lewis’ work in that of his master. It has certainly whet my appetite to read more of MacDonald’s work.
The more of MacDonald you read, the more you’ll discover his profound impact on Lewis. Some of the most essential reading is recommended by lewis himself in his intro to the anthology-Unspoken Sermons, The Golden Key, Phantastes, Sir Gibbie etc, but in the end it’s best to read it all, or as much of it as you can: partly because Lewis did, and was influenced by his whole body of work, but also because Lewis misjudges MacDonald as a novelist. His Scottish novels in particular are captivating as stories, not just for what Lewis called the “detachable merits” of preaching in them…but he’s right that even for the preaching alone, they’re well worth reading. He could only fit so much into a short anthology, which was meant to whet people’s appetites for more.
This is what I’m discovering… 🙂 I do have “Sir Gibbie” (David Jack’s recent translation) on my reading list for 2019.