The quote I remembered right off was this one:

'Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day, in our own world at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you'd never know which were which?'

after they had shot the bear in the woods. This idea was taken from The Princess and Curdie when he was given the gift of telling, by taking hold of someone's hand, what kind of beast they were turning into. He encountered a monkey and a snake, among others.

The same rose-fire that gave him that gift, was alike in another fashion. When Eustace was undragoned, he afterward described the thick, scaly skin coming off, leaving him soft and white and tender; he also told of the pain. That is reminiscent of the ordeal that Curdie underwent in the old Princess's fire,

and found that all that was gone of them was the rough, hard skin; they were white and smooth like the princess's.

I've never read George Macdonald. So many people say he's so good. If I were to read him, where should I start?

I only discoverd George MacDonald recently. My brother had been talking about him for quite some time after he read The Princess and the Goblen and then one day while at the bookshop, whilte browsing through the English section I stumbled across the book. Even though it was TERRIBLY over priced, I bought if for Narnian_Archer, seeing as it was her birthday the next day. And on the way home, I of course read it. I have to say, I just loved that book. I love the way it was written, I love the story, I love the characters, I love verything about it. There was a little bit about the author at the end of the book and I read the George MacDonald greatly inspired C.S. Lewis. I've been meaning to do a research on George MacDonald, but I haven't had time to do it yet.

aileth, I found your post very intersting, I had no idea that George MacDonald influned certain parts of the Narnia books, but I also find tha fascinating.

I really want to read more of George MacDonald, I'm searching for The Princess and Curdie, but so far I haven't been able to find it in the bookshops it was a pure miracle I found the Princess and the Goblen, but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to find it with time

Oh wow, thanks for those observations, aileth! Those are so cool! I really need to read The Princess and Curdie someday, but like wild rose, I've never been able to find it. Of course, it's available online, but I'd like to reread The Princess and the Goblin first before tackling the sequel and I haven't had time yet.

I'm so glad you liked The Princess and the Goblin, Wild! It's really a wonderful book. Narnian_Archer is in for a treat for her birthday.

I don't know if Lewis was particularly inspired by this passage in regards to themes that appear in The Silver Chair, but I will say that I was strongly reminded of that when I read it in George MacDonald's "The Last Farthing" in Unspoken Sermons:

It is the vast outside; the ghastly dark beyond the gates of the city of which God is the light—where the evil dogs go ranging, silent as the dark, for there is no sound any more than sight. The time of signs is over. Every sense has its signs, and they were all misused: there is no sense, no sign more— nothing now by means of which to believe. The man wakes from the final struggle of death, in absolute loneliness— such a loneliness as in the most miserable moment of deserted childhood he never knew. Not a hint, not a shadow of anything outside his consciousness reaches him. All is dark, dark and dumb; no motion—not the breath of a wind! never a dream of change! not a scent from far-off field! nothing to suggest being or thing besides the man himself, no sign of God anywhere. God has so far withdrawn from the man, that he is conscious only of that from which he has withdrawn. In the midst of the live world he cared for nothing but himself; now in the dead world he is in God's prison, his own separated self. He would not believe in God because he never saw God; now he doubts if there be such a thing as the face of a man—doubts if he ever really saw one, ever anything more than dreamed of such a thing:—he never came near enough to human being, to know what human being really was—so may well doubt if human beings ever were, if ever he was one of them.

Now, what George MacDonald is describing here is what the "outer darkness" might be like to those who experience it, and I don't think that Jill, Puddleglum and Eustace had been cast out into that.

Even so, I see a lot of similar themes running through this quote and through The Silver Chair, particularly as you get to the part where Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum are in the throes of enchantment and are losing faith in everything, as well the whole experience of the still, dark, silent hopelessness of Underland. The bit about the signs is extremely evocative of overarching plot of The Silver Chair, too. Knowing what high regard Lewis had for MacDonald's writings, especially his religious teachings, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he drew some inspiration for The Silver Chair from this passage.

I admit with shame that I still haven't read The Princess and the Goblin. Talk about back to front, reading the sequel first! His tales for children are really enjoyable. I had The Golden Key as a child, liked it, but then decided to get rid of it later, because it was a "kid's book." (I have since managed to lay hands on all of those books that I discarded at the time.) The turn of phrase often reminds you of Lewis's writing, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Lewis's reminds you of Macdonald's style

The Portent is much heavier reading. I don't have a copy of it, but it is much darker in tone--definitely not a children's book. If you want to read copies of his adult novels, I prefer the ones edited by Dan Hamilton, rather than the ones done by Michael Phillips--they seem closer to the originals. (Modernization--gackk!)

You can find The Princess and the Goblin online for free, aileth, or you could also purchase an inexpensive ebook if you download a eReading platform like Kindle for PC or Nook for PC. Of course, I know that it's not nearly as nice as curling up with a real, ink-and-paper book, but sometimes you can't wait, either.

I ran across an article today about the representation of "the Childlike" found in both MacDonald and Lewis's writings. I thought it was quite good, and it had a lot of interesting and profound quotes scattered through it. I especially liked the fact that the author of the article took the time to point towards different characters within Lewis and MacDonald's fictional works to illustrate the disparity between childlikeness and childishness. The paragraphs comparing the personalities and journeys of Lucy from The Chronicles of Narnia and Irene from The Princess and the Goblin were particularly well-presented, I thought.

I felt like the author of the article may have been missing some of MacDonald's points from his "The Child in the Midst" sermon, but I would really need to go back and reread that before commenting myself. It's been a while. All in all, though, it was a very good article and well worth the time it took to read it, I felt.

Can you believe it? I have a copy of The Princess and the Goblin and still haven't read it

I picked up Curdie to find those quotes and ended up reading through it again. When I first read it, I hadn't read the Space trilogy, so couldn't make any comparisons. But the scene in the castle, when the evildoers were punished, is very much like the nasty part at the end of That Hideous Strength. Of course, Macdonald's beasts were sentient, and Lewis's were not, but in essence they were fulfilling the same purpose.

I already posted about this in the discussion on C.S. Lewis and sehnsucht, but it is so apposite to this thread that I felt it needed to be posted here as well with some additional thoughts... this is an excellent article detailing how the theme of sehnsucht appears in both of the fictional works of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald, and tells us much about how the latter influenced the former in respect to that theme.

I have long wondered about Lewis's belief that he never wrote a book in which he did not quote MacDonald, and this past summer I noted the very likely connection between MacDonald's "the land where the shadows fall" and Lewis's Shadowlands when I read The Golden Key. I didn't know about the connection between Lilith and Till We Have Faces until reading the above article, however. (I haven't read either yet.) It makes me want to go hunting for more connections.

Speaking of which, I am hoping to reread The Princess and the Goblin sometime before the end of the year as it recently occurred to me that there seem to be some thematic connections between it and The Silver Chair. (If my memory is serving my correctly, the goblins' plot to take over the kingdom seems quite similar to the LotGK's designs to take over Narnia.) Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? I'll certainly post mine after rereading.

Oh yes, we could certainly list some similarities - they are underground and prefer being underground, dislike the overlanders, are different physically, and on at least one occasion a human was kidnapped and imprisoned below ground.
The goblins, on the other hand, are more like those in The Hobbit, ugly and nasty creatures with an evil leader who is one of themselves - the earthmen are oppressed by someone who is not from their race.
Apart from McDonald elements, we must realise that there are a lot of elements in European fairy-tale and folklore that turn up frequently in different stories; the human child, kidnapped by fairies, goblins, or elves,is not uncommon.

Ive never read it? It is true that Macdonald taught universal salvation? Ive heard that he does. Im not making any accusations against him. I find that concerning.
Anyhow Ive wanted to read him. Id like too.

Ive never read it? It is true that Macdonald taught universal salvation? Ive heard that he does. Im not making any accusations against him. I find that concerning.

There's a quote from The Great Divorce where the main character (more or less Lewis himself) asks George MacDonald about this:

"In your own books, Sir," said I, "you were a Universalist. You talked as if all men would be saved. And St. Paul too."

"Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it's ill talking of such questions."

"Because they are too terrible, Sir?"

"No. Because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see—small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope—something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn't is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic's vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. And wouldn't Universalism do the same? Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived."

While MacDonald did write as though all would be saved, or at least with great hope of it, he didn't reject the existence of Hell: The Consuming Fire from MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons shares some of his perspective on that.

Just popping in to say that the version of George Macdonald in The Great Divorce is Lewis' representation of him. If he were asked to explain his belief in Universalism in real life, he might have said something different. You'd really have to read his books and letters to get a grasp on it.

Of course, Lewis was a big fan of Macdonald, so presumably he'd try to represent his views accurately in a fictional portrayal. But honestly Rose-Tree's quote makes it sound to me like Lewis didn't personally believe in Universalism or Predestination but didn't want to offend or alienate readers who did so he wrote a big chunk of gobbledygook to reconcile different viewpoints.

Actually, I think Lewis' statements on behalf of MacDonald very closely mirror the "now we see through a glass darkly" passage, written by Saint Paul in one of the Corinthian letters (yes, I could google to figure out which one that is, but then, I would have to google). It also seems to repeat something which not many people like to remember: that figuring out the future or eternity is really quite futile, mainly because to do so would probably make our brains explode.

I've personally only really read MacDonald's fictional works, so I really can't speak to his religious beliefs. I can see, however, a good number of connections between their handling of fantasy and fictitious creatures. All that said, I think that it's clear that Lewis' belief structure went through an evolution during his life, and I think it is quite possible that MacDonald's did, too. In Rose's quote, too, there might be just a small hint of the idea that either writer might be wrong, or they might just be glimpsing different parts of the one final whole.

I think that MacDonald is my 2nd or 3rd favorite author! (Lewis is one of them too) It really is sad that he has been forgotten so much. If you read Phantastes, you really can see the influence that it had over Jack. I also love both of the Princess books. Phenominal. However, to those reading, one of the best novels of MacDonald that I have read is Salted With Fire. AMAZING BOOK! It's literally jam packed with truth. MacDonald truly is a treasure.