As an interesting autobiographical note, MacDonald’s new hobby of bookbinding (a lifelong fascination which became a serious pursuit in Bordighera) is integral to the story. His hours with paste, paper, parchment, leather, and chemical solutions restoring his own old books, were expanded into the fictional restoration of an entire library through the skills of his main character. From beginning to end—from cataloguing to restoration—MacDonald’s love of great old libraries never left him. It began with The Portent all the way back in 1860, and here is one of his main characters again thirty years later in another “great library” surrounded by old and valuable books.

I mentioned earlier that There and Back was the first long novel MacDonald had written in several years. As his sixth from last book, there would never be anything like it again. With its unparalleled insight into the nature of belief and how belief is arrived at, there may yet be indications of MacDonald’s age showing through now and then. Some of the theological and “apologetic” passages are so dense and circuitous that I had trouble making heads or tails of them. And some sloppiness of detail is evident, indicating to me that MacDonald may not have gone over the manuscript as carefully as had been his practice in previous years. As much as I have made of MacDonald’s passion for editing his work, this may be an example of what I call “first draft, final draft.”

For instance, he gives two of the central characters—made worse that they are related—the same name, Arthur. I can interpret this in no other way than as a fairly massive blunder, because it is never accounted for. If it was intentional, MacDonald would surely have made some reference to the glaringly odd fact. We saw that in Castle Warlock, when MacDonald inadvertently used “James” for two men, he later corrected the oversight, giving one of the two another name. But here no correction is made. In my earlier edited edition from 1986, The Baron’s Apprenticeship, one of the Arthurs was changed to Adam. Since that time I have had second thoughts about changing the name of a central character. I have thus reverted for this new edition to MacDonald’s original and kept both as “Arthur,” notwithstanding the confusion it causes in the story. If this is an indication of MacDonald’s age not catching everything, it seemed appropriate to leave the mistake as illuminating the reality that both MacDonald as an author and his books come to us within the ongoing dynamic of an imperfect humanity.

Likewise there are two chapters entitled “Wingfold and Barbara” and another two carrying the title “Baronet and Blacksmith.” I left these oversights intact for the same reason. (It is possible MacDonald did not mind multiple chapters with the same title, as it does in rare instances occur elsewhere.)

Finally, in the chapter entitled “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” MacDonald treats us to some fascinating insights into his perspective of editing and different editions of works of the past. His words are all the more interesting in that now I find myself, as do many others, engaging in the analysis of his texts in exactly the same way he speaks of analyzing Coleridge’s. It is now we who are trying to figure out what MacDonald wrote, when and in what order, and what were his intentions and meanings. As we find so often, MacDonald often spoke prophetically (though unintentionally) about the legacy that would follow him.