Phantastes

Book excerpt: To celebrate the 150th anniversary of its publication in 1858, Paternoster has produced the first ever annotated edition of Phantastes, George MacDonald (1824-1905). A great nineteenth-century innovator of modern fantasy, his works influenced C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. "I do not write for children," MacDonald once said, "but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five." . Described by MacDonald as 'a faerie romance for men and women', Phantastes tells the tale of Anodos, a young man who one morning wakes up to find himself in the dreamlike landscape of faerie. Through the landscape he must travel, facing malevolent tree-spirits and fighting giants, dogged all the time by his shadow-self and eventually reaching a climactic act of valour, self-sacrifice and redemption. On his journey he is inspired by a mysterious white lady, befriended by knights and given strength by the 'old woman with the young eyes'. Phantastes is a tale about selfishness and self-sacrifice, pride and humility, about friendship and fear. Above all it is a novel about death - good death - death which is really the start of life.