Therefore, I invite you to gaze back in time through the “northern windows” of these volumes. Picture yourself perhaps near the cheerful hearth described in the opening pages of What’s Mine’s Mine, looking out the window to the cold seas and mountains in the distance, where perhaps you get a fleeting glimpse of highlanders Ian and Alister Macruadh.

Or imagine yourself walking up Duke Street in Huntly from MacDonald’s birth home, following in the footsteps of fictional Robert Falconer to the town square.

Or envision yourself on some windswept highland moor with Gibbie or Cosmo Warlock.

Or walk up the circular staircase of Fyvie Castle to Donal Grant’s tiny tower hideaway where he began to unravel the mysteries of that ancient and spooky place.

Or walk from Cullen’s Seatown alongside Malcolm selling the fish in his creel, turning at the Market Cross into Grant Street and continuing past Miss Horn’s house and up the hill to the entrance of the Cullen House grounds.

Or perhaps climb Castle Hill to the George MacDonald memorial bench and gaze across the sweep of Cullen Bay to Scarnose as Malcolm’s story comes to life before your eyes.

From any of these settings, whether real or imaginary, drift back through the years and gaze through the panoramic windows of these stories, and take in with pleasure the drama, relationships, images, characters, settings, and spiritual truths George MacDonald offers us as we are drawn into his world.

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2017

INTRODUCTION

Everything Depends on the God You Believe In

In There and Back we meet for a third time one of George MacDonald’s most memorable characters—the former curate of the book bearing his own name, now rector of a new parish. Though one of MacDonald’s seasoned literary veterans, in this case Thomas Wingfold steps aside to occupy a supporting role. Indeed, it is some time before he appears on stage. Once he does, however, he becomes the spiritual soul and anchor of the unfolding drama.

There and Back and A Rough Shaking were probably written, if not simultaneously certainly in close proximity. Dates of publication tell only part of the story and depend on many factors, particularly MacDonald’s contractual arrangements with magazine and book publishers and their scheduling priorities. *

What we know for certain is that the two books were serialized in two different magazines from the fall of 1889 through the fall of 1890, There and Back running but one month ahead. Their book publications, however, were reversed, A Rough Shaking released by Blackie in December of 1890 or January of 1891, with There and Back following from Kegan Paul in April. All we can say for certain is that the timing of these two titles are closely intertwined and that they were the last two books written as the decade of the 1880s drew to a close.

The new decade opened with MacDonald turning his attention to “a new fantasy” he felt stirring within him, though he confessed doubts that he would be able to write it. In March of 1890 he began a preliminary draft of this “new fantasy” which he would later entitle: Anacosm,^† A Tale of the Seventh Dimension. It would, of course, evolve five years later after many more drafts, into Lilith. But this is getting ahead of the story.