BY G. CONNOR SALTER

George MacDonald was many things—a teacher, a novelist, a pastor, a social activist, a public speaker, and a teller of fairy tales. His stories influenced some of the most influential fantasists of the twentieth century. C.S. Lewis recalled that buying MacDonald’s fantasy story Phantastes in a train bookshop was a key step in his spiritual journey. J.R.R. Tolkien recalled loving MacDonald’s short story “The Golden Key” as a child.

While MacDonald isn’t as well-known today as some of the writers he influenced, scholars like Dr. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson (PhD, University of St. Andrews) are making sure his work is studied and promoted. Johnson has written about MacDonald in many contexts, including popular blogs such as The Rabbit Room, as well as academic journals like North Wind, Sehnsucht, and Linguaculture. Along with contributing to various books on MacDonald (Rethinking George MacDonald, The Inklings and King Arthur, The Inklings and Culture), she co-edited the book Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy with Michael Partridge. She has also contributed to new editions or adaptations of MacDonald’s works. In 2022, she provided an introduction to an edition of Lilith illustrated by Gabrielle Ragusi which also included a preface by poet Malcolm Guite. In 2023, she contributed a preface to Stephen Hesselman’s graphic novel adaption of “The Golden Key.”

She has also spoken about MacDonald at Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, numerous places in the United States and Canada, and various events hosted by the C.S. Lewis & Kindred Spirits (CSLKS) Society in Romania.

She was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Interview Questions

What was your first exposure to George MacDonald’s work?

Someone told a 5- or 6-year-old me that as I liked Narnia, I might also like these stories about a princess and some goblins. She was right.

What led you from becoming a reader of his stories to studying them in depth?

I love this question! In my early twenties, I took a course on John Bunyan at Regent College, Vancouver. Naively thinking I was taking some time off before working on my final essay, I picked up “The Golden Key,” which I had not read for years. And I was blown away by how deeply that fairytale was engaging with Pilgrim’s Progress—without impeding the magic of the fairytale. I returned to MacDonald’s literature with new eyes. Not long afterwards, when working on another Regent course on spiritual discernment, I began to realize how formational MacDonald’s children’s literature had been in my faith journey—equipping me, teaching me, preparing me, filling me with scripture—without my ever being aware. This led to my Master’s dissertation on the educational nature of story, and its devaluation in the modern Western church. Which proved to be the perfect foundation for a PhD on MacDonald and Mythopoesis.

Lewis owes a clear debt to MacDonald—he even makes MacDonald a character in The Great Divorce. What are some ways MacDonald influences Lewis’ writing?

Lewis spent most of his life re-reading MacDonald—when he says “I doubt there is anything that I have written in which I do not quote him,” he is not exaggerating. At all. In 1946 Lewis wrote of his realization that—now he was thinking critically about his Christian faith and his participatory living into that—he was starting to realize how MacDonald’s writing had been shaping and preparing him for decades, and was continuing to guide him in maturation. He called it a praeparatio evangelica.

Only months before he died, Lewis named MacDonald’s Phantastes as the book which “most shaped his vocational attitude” and “his philosophy of life.” He placed it above Virgil, above Boethius, even above Chesterton. It should then be no surprise that careful readers of MacDonald, upon returning to Lewis, are not infrequently a little overwhelmed at just how many ways MacDonald influenced Lewis’ writing.

But I think a particularly significant way lies in this realization that MacDonald’s mythopoeic crafting—the ways in which the long conversation of literature shaped and informed MacDonald’s own work, and into which he is continuously (both explicitly and implicitly) drawing his readers—was a praeparatio evangelica. MacDonald modelled beautifully and winsomely how stories could be such. And when one starts to examine Lewis’ fiction in particular, but also his engagement…. no, engagement isn’t sufficient… I think relationship is far more accurate… with the “clouds of witnesses” in his literary studies, one begins to see evidence of a literary tutelage that explains why Lewis goes so far as to call MacDonald “my Master.”

People have gone back and forth on how much MacDonald influenced J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien says he became less impressed with “The Golden Key” as an adult, which informs his choice to write Smith of Wootton Major. But Jason Fisher argues there’s a lot more MacDonald influence in Tolkien’s writings than just that one piece, and multiple scholars have talked about how Tolkien often downplayed his influences. What’s your take on this matter?

Well—Tolkien himself unambiguously claims at least some influence, and Lewis’ enthusiastic description of Tolkien to his friend Arthur Greeves is well-known: “The one man absolutely fitted, if fate had allowed, to be a third in our friendship in the old days, for he also grew up on William Morris and George MacDonald.”

So, how do you make sense of this? Jason Fisher’s article is really helpful on this topic, and he points us to others. I’d add to those, insights from Richard Sturch and Sharin Schroeder.

Dating Tolkien’s comments, as well as being familiar with his personality (and contradictory outbursts) helps. In his late forties, Tolkien published a letter in a British newspaper in which he openly acknowledged MacDonald’s influence. And by this time (as we know from multiple sources), he was regularly reading MacDonald to his children. Humphrey Carpenter writes:“much of their own reading-matter consisted of [their father’s] own childhood favourites, such as George MacDonald’s ‘Curdie’ stories, and Andrew Lang’s fairytale collections.”

In his mid-fifties Tolkien was still quite laudatory—this was when he wrote On Fairy Stories (OFS), which he claimed was: “Quite possibly the most important thing I have ever written” (and many of the concepts within which reiterate those MacDonald explores in his own seminal essay The Imagination). In OFS Tolkien writes: “The Magical, the fairy-story, may be used as a Mirour de l’Omme; and it may (but not so easily) be made a vehicle of Mystery. This at least is what George MacDonald attempted, achieving stories of power and beauty when he succeeded, as in ‘The Golden Key’(which he called a fairy-tale); and even when he partly failed, as in Lilith (which he called a romance).”[1]

Schroeder points out additional nods to MacDonald in the early manuscript versions of that essay: “‘For me at any rate fairy-stories are especially associated with Scotland: not through any special knowledge . . . but simply by reason of the names of Andrew Lang and George MacDonald. To them in different ways I owe the books which most affected the background of my imagination since childhood,” and “MacDonald, in that mixture of German and Scottish flavours (which makes him so inevitably attractive to myself), has depicted what will always be to me the classic goblin. By that standard I judge all goblins, old or new.”

It’s also worth noting that MacDonald is one of only two authors that Tolkien mentions favorably in this essay. Then, when in his mid-seventies Tolkien was asked to write a preface for a new edition of “The Golden Key,” he accepted. Yet as he began to work on the project, he became increasingly cantankerous and critical—that is when he wrote the negative comments to which you allude. Perhaps it is providential that the publisher’s project fell through, and the preface was never completed—because out of Tolkien’s dissatisfaction with the tale he once considered a “mystical” story of “power and beauty,” Smith of Wootton Major was crafted: itself a mystical story of power and beauty. And his last complete story.

I think it’s useful to remember that what the older Tolkien did not like in Lewis, nor even in Arthurian legend, is what he also did not like in MacDonald. Also, that even a cursory glance through the collected Letters reveals that vehement self-contradiction was not necessarily a rarity for Tolkien. (This even becomes rather humorous for a reader, once moving past the initial confusion!)

Given the contradictory assertions in his elder years, Tolkien’s own fiction is perhaps the best testament. One of my favorite resonances was pointed out to me by a colleague, Carolyn Kelly. She noted how in The Lord of The Rings, King Théoden’s healing, reassertion of identity, and move into a better and wiser self is assisted both by stories and the loving attendance of the princess-like and daughter-like Éowyn—just as is the king in the Princess & Curdie, likewise ill and disempowered by the subversive corruption of his court, also through the power of story and his princess-daughter’s ministrations. This is only one of many occasions in which not just an “essence,” but even details cannot help but cause a reader to think: if Tolkien, who grew up reading MacDonald, liked him well enough that that was a point of resonance between him and Lewis, and then chose to ‘feed’ his children upon his fairy tales… regardless of cranky assertions otherwise, certainly there’s credence to his own claim that MacDonald did influence not only specific moments or creatures but also—to use Tolkien’s own words—“the background of [his] imagination.”

Outside of the Inklings, who are some writers that MacDonald influenced?

Oh! The list is endless, but here are some that might surprise folk: Lilias Trotter, Florence Nightingale, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lucy Maud Montgomery, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Oswald Chambers, Dorothy Sayers, Madeleine L’Engle, Ursula Le Guin, Frederick Buechner, Maurice Sendak (Sendak also illustrated a number of GMD works—as did E.H. Shepherd of Winnie the Pooh fame), James Houston, James Torrance, Phillip Yancey, Neil Gaiman, Malcolm Guite, Jennifer Trafton, Andrew Peterson, Susannah Clark….

You allude on your website to the fact that people perhaps misunderstand MacDonald’s struggles with the church he pastored. What’s the larger story that people miss?

My biggest concern around this is that many still purport, as I once did, that MacDonald was a “failed pastor turned writer.” Yet this is exceedingly inaccurate. MacDonald was pastor in the Congregational church in Arundel for barely more than two years—in his twenties. He arrived still unsure of his life trajectory, but knowing that he did want to write (and with his father urging him to teach). The two pastors before MacDonald had been fired from that church, so when for him the salary was decreased due to dissatisfaction from some of the elders, it’s evident he fared better than his predecessors.

Greville suggests that for some his father’s teaching “with regard to Sabbath-keeping” was “suspect,” as was his hope that animals might share in the afterlife. He also says there was a concern, possibly stemming from MacDonald’s translation of some Novalis hymns, that he was “tainted with German Theology.” But the official record says only this: that MacDonald’s opinion that there might be a “future state of probation,” after death, for “the Heathen” was problematic. The record goes on to say that “much regret” would be caused if MacDonald resigned, but that continued expression of this opinion would be problematic. Only twenty parishioners signed the document.

MacDonald stayed for another ten months before deciding that the decreased salary was insufficient to support his family (we do know from later letters that he remained close with some congregants) and so he moved to Manchester. Here, he both taught (literature and science) and preached at a house church. But he quickly discovered that his vocational passion was for both writing and teaching literature. He became a very successful and popular lecturer and teacher—one of the earliest English Literature professors—and that, in addition to his publications, was his vocation and salary source. MacDonald remained in such high demand as a guest-preacher that there were periods of his life in which he was preaching almost every Sunday—but always for free. So rather than a “failed pastor turned writer,” MacDonald was a successful scholar and author, who remained throughout his adulthood in very high demand for preaching (and his pastoring of friends and even—through letters—acquaintances, was also life-long).

It’s also been said a few times that MacDonald went so far down the “God’s grace and love” path that he became a universalist—something Lewis alludes to in The Great Divorce. How would you describe his position?

Well, the above alludes to the fact that—like Lewis—MacDonald did not believe that those who had never heard the Gospel could be damned to eternal suffering without having the chance to choose … not if God was a God of justice, mercy, and love. Lewis would be quick to defend MacDonald’s understanding of Love as something not at all soft, calling it rather “inexorable” and highlighting its inseparability from obedience. MacDonald is clear that he believes in Hell, and clear that he believes that “no one comes to the Father but by Christ.” But he finds it difficult to conceive that any person, when brought to full understanding of God’s love, could forever resist its goodness. This leads him to the “purgatorial” position of hope that punitive Hell might someday be emptied. But only through thorough relinquishing of “thy will, not mine” to God.

How did you come to be involved with the documentary Fantasy Makers?

From what I understand, when the director/producer Andrew Wall decided to do a documentary on Tolkien and Lewis, his research kept leading him to George MacDonald, of whom he’d been previously unaware. Wall became fascinated by MacDonald, and started doing research on MacDonald scholars. Thus, I found an email in my inbox!

You’ve contributed afterwords and introductions to Romanian translations of “The Golden Key” and Owen Barfield’s story “The Child and the Giant.” How did those projects come about?

The C.S. Lewis & Kindred Spirit Society of Eastern & Central Europe do amazing work, and in Romania they biennially host the most international of Lewis conferences, with scholars from all over the world. Denise Vasiliu and her colleagues Rodica Albu and Teodora Ghiviriga host this.

Dr. Albu was the first person to translate The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe into Romanian when the country was still in the grips of communism. She became excited about MacDonald when I first lectured there, and asked if I would join her in a translation project of “The Golden Key.”That venture turned into an ongoing venture with the publisher Ars Longa: The Inklings & Kindred Spirits collection, to publish short mythopoeic tales, including John Ruskin and Walter Wangerin Jr. I also had the privilege of being a consultant for the Romanian translations of The Princess & The Goblin and The Princess & Curdie (Casa Cărții). Helping someone from a different culture understand Victorian language is a lot of fun, and delving into the theological nuances, a joy.

A year or so ago, I spoke with you about the struggles that come with being a scholar trying to explain why we research things that people may find obscure. This year marks MacDonald’s two-hundredth birthday, and while much more needs to be explored, there have also been great strides in the last few decades. What are some strides you’ve been glad to see?

When I first began working on MacDonald no one considered him as a literary scholar, despite that being his primary profession. Recently, I’ve heard a couple of people opine that attention to his literary identity is overshadowing his theological identity. Whilst I don’t think that’s true yet, it has caused me to marvel at the difference three decades can make. MacDonald studies are burgeoning, and as more and more scholars dive into both his writings and his life, much long-perpetuated misinformation is slowly being dislodged. MacDonald’s love of science, his radical social justice work (i.e., educating women and the working class), the rich diversity and complexity of his theological upbringing, the impact of his identity as a Scot… all these are becoming better known both in the field and—slowly, slowly—in Victorian, Lit, and Inkling studies generally. I’m particularly encouraged by the increased desire of Inklings scholars to take the accolades of Lewis and Chesterton, etc., more seriously and thus read MacDonald … and read him more broadly and better.

As this happens, and scholarship increases, there is necessarily a growing accountability for scholars to know MacDonald’s broader corpus as well as his biography—which makes for better scholarship. There were many claims such as MacDonald’s loss of faith, his grandmother burning his fiddle, the lack of literature in his oppressive home, his fantasy being free of religion, all of his poetry being bad, his failure to engage with contemporary authors, his avoidance of political issues, that simply are no longer possible.

What are some MacDonald topics you would particularly like to see scholars explore in the near future?

When MacDonald was a young man, not many Brits read German or knew the German Romantic fairy tales. MacDonald did, and he loved them. But he read SO MUCH ELSE! And whilst he does engage with Novalis and Hoffman and Goethe and others in his fiction (and there does remain more to be done here—especially with Goethe and Luther), this is but the tiniest thread of his vast literary engagement. Folks are finally delving deeper into his engagement with literature beyond the Romantics, such as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Dante, but so much yet remains: Plato, Ambrose, Boethius, Bacon, Sidney, Herbert, Hooker, Milton, Donne, Vaughn, Hogg, Ossian, Luther, Burns, and more.

MacDonald was a passionate teacher of Literature and he plays with it on so many levels in his texts, both conversing with voices and tales, and also putting those into theological discussion. We need scholars in these fields to dive into MacDonald and help the rest of us grasp the depth of engagement (I’ve seen this happen with a few specialists once they start reading him…watched them become amazed at how well MacDonald has read and knows their subject). Better educating each other will also help us to see where MacDonald is agreeing with certain voices (Novalis, Plato, Donne, etc.) and where he disagrees with them.

I also think we’ve yet to delve adequately into where MacDonald as inheritor of Scottish literature and culture differentiates himself and the literature and lore of his country from that of English and German Romanticism. I think the better we become at this literary study, the better we will understand MacDonald theologically… and better grasp the significance of his work on the imagination. Our literary criticism and comparative critical work will be stronger, and of greater worth. Becoming more aware of some of MacDonald’s social justice work (both in what he addresses within texts as well as his lived practice) and his patronage of the arts, and how those complement his literature and theology will, I think, be both informative and inspirational.

Any upcoming projects you can share with us?

This year’s bicentennial conferences are exciting and will be keeping me busy. Check them out on the George MacDonald Society website! Society galas in Wheaton in May, and St. Andrews in November: lectures, yes, but importantly also art, music, and more. I’m also looking forward to lecturing in Toronto later this month, and with Amanda Vernon at the Yale MacDonald conference in December. The CSLKS Society of Romania will be having a MacDonald-focused webinar in the autumn, and Pints with Jack is doing a whole MacDonald month in May in which I’ll have a part. There are many other bicentenary events occurring, so stay alert!

More information about Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson’s work can be found on her website or The Works of George MacDonald.

[1] Interviewee’s Note: Tolkien also claims in this essay that “Death is the theme that most inspired George MacDonald,” which I think is a fundamental (though possibly unintentional) misrepresentation: I would like to think that Tolkien meant resurrected life.