The fairy Peaseblossom and the goblin Toadstool set off on the oddest mission: to lure a girl and a boy to Faery, to bring before the Queen—for her subjects in Fairyland are too well-behaved to be amusing. Can they find the right dreamers? Then Peaseblossom encounters Alice, who wishes she could watch a setting sun at all times—while Toadstool runs into the nearly penniless Richard, who wants a buy a new umbrella for his mother. Perfect! Yet nothing can go as planned . . . and soon Alice and Richard find themselves alone and lost in a strange woods, with no help but the guidance of the strange creatures they encounter along the way. George MacDonald, author of "Phantastes, " here presents three tales of magical Faery — "Cross Purposes," "The Shadows," and "The Flight of the Shadow.""
Author
George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. He was educated at Aberdeen University and after a short and stormy career as a minister at Arundel, where his unorthodox views led to his dismissal, he turned to fiction as a means of earning a living. He wrote over 50 books. Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, MacDonald inspired many authors, such as G.K. Chesterton, W. H. Auden, J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master": "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence." Elizabeth Yates wrote of Sir Gibbie, "It moved me the way books did when, as a child, the great gates of literature began to open and first encounters with noble thoughts and utterances were unspeakably thrilling." Even Mark Twain, who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald. For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George\_M...
