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Phantastes and Lilith
1964 1st Thus Erdmans
420 pages, Paperback
First published October 19, 2013
8 people are currently reading
239 people want to read
About the author
George MacDonald
1,716 books2,501 followersGeorge MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet and Christian Congregational minister. He became a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow-writer Lewis Carroll. In addition to his fairy tales, MacDonald wrote several works of Christian theology, including several collections of sermons.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 8, 2012
Being an avid fantasy reader, I am more than familiar with the quest motif, and am heartily sick of it. Rushing the reader from one stressful situation to another, with the main characters (who largely lack personality or likeability), barely making it out alive each time, is not the best way to provide an ascape, in my opinion. Phantastes bears little resemblence to the modern fantasy model. It has very little plot, but did provide me with the escape I wanted. The main character spends most of the book, wandering aimlessly through an enchanted forest, completely lost, as I have often wanted to be. George MacDonald exhibits a surprising knowledge of druidic tree lore, and the book could almost be used as a reference in this regard. If you have ever looked longingly at the forest and wanted to immerse yourself in the green mystery, Phantastes should provide you with this experience, with a healthy dose of danger thrown in for good measure.
Lilith is darker, and seems to be trying to tell us something obscure. This one was harder for me to get into, but it does have some fascinating elements. This was my first encounter with Lilith as an Archetype, and unfortunately, I felt that the character Lilith was probably the weakest element. She was a steriotypical, irascible femme fatal, which so many writers from the romantic era seemed to be obsessed with.
Lilith is darker, and seems to be trying to tell us something obscure. This one was harder for me to get into, but it does have some fascinating elements. This was my first encounter with Lilith as an Archetype, and unfortunately, I felt that the character Lilith was probably the weakest element. She was a steriotypical, irascible femme fatal, which so many writers from the romantic era seemed to be obsessed with.
January 29, 2013
I actually read Lilith a long time ago, so I just read Phantastes. It took me back to my childhood-- my sisters and I loved to read myths and fairytales from all over the world. We would then go into the woods (just beyond our yard in Connecticut) and find moss, ferns, mushrooms, special rocks, etc., and make fairy houses in cardboard boxes. We'd leave them out on the porch for the fairies to find. This story takes me right back to the woods, the fairies, the birdsong and the scampering creatures. There is so much of sweetness in this story. i love the vulnerability of Anodos, the soft and wise mother-types who give him refuge, the musical poetry interspersed throughout. This is no superhero story--our protagonist is quite flawed: naive, impulsive, often selfish; but that's kind of the point. It's a coming of age story--a boy searching for purpose and meaning, for goodness and love. It's the kind of story George MacDonald does best.
July 31, 2012
George MacDonald was one of the inventors of the modern fantasy novel. His work has influenced Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, Tolkein, J.K. Rowling (just read the tale of the magic mirror in Phantastes), and many others. Phantastes was his first effort and it's a difficult read but worth the trek. His writing affects me at a deep subconscious level that's difficult to explain; the journeys of the characters in Fairy Land are metaphoric and resonate with my own life journey. I agree with the person who described Phantastes as "impossible to read but wonderful to reread." It's full of amazing imagery and ideas. My advice to a new reader of MacDonald's would be to read Lilith first, which was written at the end of his life and is far more accessible. I would also suggest that if you're getting frustrated with a section, just skip it and move forward. Many passages bog down in Victorian poetry and lofty language that would likely be edited out if published for modern readers. Nevertheless, these novels are lovely to read.
April 28, 2011
Phantastes is a very strange story about a man named Anodos who finds himself in the realm of faery encountering different adventures. Full of poignant passages and moral messages, it is a powerful book about purity.
Lilith is George Macdonald's darkest and most well written work in my opinion. It is a book about metaphysics,death,lust,true love and universal salvation. I could not believe at how much I missed the second time round when I read it.The book just woke me up as if I was in a long slumber. Absolutely brilliant and beautiful.
Lilith is George Macdonald's darkest and most well written work in my opinion. It is a book about metaphysics,death,lust,true love and universal salvation. I could not believe at how much I missed the second time round when I read it.The book just woke me up as if I was in a long slumber. Absolutely brilliant and beautiful.
March 11, 2011
Having read somewhere that the work of such beloved authors as C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle had been influenced by having read George MacDonald, I procured this book. I have long enjoyed their work and was interested in reading something that might have been inspirational for them.
Phantastes, the first novel, follows Anodos as he traverses through the Fairy Land, experiencing quite a bit, and accomplishing almost nothing. The tale meandered as Anodos did, never threatening to have a plot or a message, just flowery script and imaginative characters, who were nonetheless quite one-dimensional. I had to put this down and read something else several times because I was so bored with it. I did not find Anodos a terribly likable character, either. Several times along his excursion, various denizens of Fairly Land give him a warning not to do something or other. Every time, Anodos does it anyway, most times even thinking, ‘Hey, I was told not to do this, but I just can’t help myself.’ Most of the conflict in the story comes as a result of Anodos ignoring or flagrantly defying the advice he has been given. However, I shudder to think how much more tiresome I would have found this tale had he taken heed and avoided peril. Upon returning from Fairy Land, Anodos finds that he has been missing from our world for 21 days and remarks that it felt like 21 years. To me, reading about the journey seemed to take 21 months.
The second novel, Lilith, begins a bit better; Mr. Vane meets a ghost who is also a raven, and a librarian and a sexton. This individual, Mr. Raven, escorts Mr. Vane to an alternate world, attempts to explain that in order to lead a more fulfilling life, Mr. Vane must ‘wake up’ and ‘go home’ (not, of course, meaning at all the general and obvious interpretation of these two concepts) and bids him take a nap. Mr. Vane, however, does not like the look of those sleeping nearby, and decides to run away. He soon finds himself on the same kind of journey Anodos undertook, encountering odd things that have little meaning or interest, but that the author seemed to have gotten a hold of some particularly hallucinatory drug and then decided to write a book about ‘life’ and ‘meaning,’ man. MacDonald also frequently insists that his narrator is having a lot of trouble describing the things he encounters, as everything was so very different and unique from his Earth-centric worldview that words fail him. This reinforces my theory that the writer was definitely trying to describe his own drug-induced visions. Otherwise, why even write a book like that?
At one point on his incredibly pointless journey, Mr. Vane decries his former preference for being alone with book or pen, musing, “Any man…is more than the greatest of books!" I strongly disagree with this statement and almost gave up reading the book. It seems to me an author with so little regard for books has not written anything worthy of my regard.
Scarcely 100 pages after I almost gave up, I did indeed give up. Mr. Vane was urged by one he trusted completely not to do something, and that if he were to do so someone he loved would suffer. At the point Mr. Vane fails to heed this most emphatic warning, I threw the book at the wall and decried the time I spent reading both tales. What a giant waste.
Phantastes, the first novel, follows Anodos as he traverses through the Fairy Land, experiencing quite a bit, and accomplishing almost nothing. The tale meandered as Anodos did, never threatening to have a plot or a message, just flowery script and imaginative characters, who were nonetheless quite one-dimensional. I had to put this down and read something else several times because I was so bored with it. I did not find Anodos a terribly likable character, either. Several times along his excursion, various denizens of Fairly Land give him a warning not to do something or other. Every time, Anodos does it anyway, most times even thinking, ‘Hey, I was told not to do this, but I just can’t help myself.’ Most of the conflict in the story comes as a result of Anodos ignoring or flagrantly defying the advice he has been given. However, I shudder to think how much more tiresome I would have found this tale had he taken heed and avoided peril. Upon returning from Fairy Land, Anodos finds that he has been missing from our world for 21 days and remarks that it felt like 21 years. To me, reading about the journey seemed to take 21 months.
The second novel, Lilith, begins a bit better; Mr. Vane meets a ghost who is also a raven, and a librarian and a sexton. This individual, Mr. Raven, escorts Mr. Vane to an alternate world, attempts to explain that in order to lead a more fulfilling life, Mr. Vane must ‘wake up’ and ‘go home’ (not, of course, meaning at all the general and obvious interpretation of these two concepts) and bids him take a nap. Mr. Vane, however, does not like the look of those sleeping nearby, and decides to run away. He soon finds himself on the same kind of journey Anodos undertook, encountering odd things that have little meaning or interest, but that the author seemed to have gotten a hold of some particularly hallucinatory drug and then decided to write a book about ‘life’ and ‘meaning,’ man. MacDonald also frequently insists that his narrator is having a lot of trouble describing the things he encounters, as everything was so very different and unique from his Earth-centric worldview that words fail him. This reinforces my theory that the writer was definitely trying to describe his own drug-induced visions. Otherwise, why even write a book like that?
At one point on his incredibly pointless journey, Mr. Vane decries his former preference for being alone with book or pen, musing, “Any man…is more than the greatest of books!" I strongly disagree with this statement and almost gave up reading the book. It seems to me an author with so little regard for books has not written anything worthy of my regard.
Scarcely 100 pages after I almost gave up, I did indeed give up. Mr. Vane was urged by one he trusted completely not to do something, and that if he were to do so someone he loved would suffer. At the point Mr. Vane fails to heed this most emphatic warning, I threw the book at the wall and decried the time I spent reading both tales. What a giant waste.
July 29, 2014
The spirituality of his story is amazing.
November 5, 2017
Lilith is in a list of the 100 best Scottish Books.
A Mr Vane (no first name is ever provided) inherits a country pile and very soon finds it is visited by a strange apparition. This is the house’s long ago librarian, a coated gentleman who from the front appears to be a raven and has the ability to move through mirrors - taking Mr Vane with him.
This mirror world at first appears strange merely in an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland kind of way. The librarian/raven is prone to whimsical verbal contortions as in, “‘No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is and then what himself is. In fact nobody is himself and himself is nobody,’” but the milieu soon develops a darker aspect in the creatures Mr Vane encounters. Seemingly dead bodies, animated skeletons (one of whom expresses a deeply misanthropic view of wedlock in a conversation, where its expostulation, “‘This can’t be hell!’ is rejoined by another’s, ‘It must: there’s marriage in it!’”) Then there are Little Ones, who if they are not careful how they eat turn into giants. These giants capture Vane and might persecute the Little Ones but somehow manage to forget their origins and remain blind to them. Visiting a city called Bulika, whose princess wishes to kill all babies to forestall a prophecy of her demise, becomes a goal of Vane’s sojourn. Her existence is bound up with two leopardesses, one spotted, one white, which feature prominently from then on.
After Vane meets the librarian/raven’s wife the couple’s identities are revealed to be Adam and Eve. Adam bestows on Vane some cryptic warnings. Vane’s rescue and revival of a comatose - to all intents dead - woman leads to complications as this turns out to be Lilith, Adam’s former wife and the same princess who blights the existence of all who live under her sway. I say live, but there is some doubt as to whether these creatures are in fact alive or dead or indeed in some other state. After that it all got a bit mired in philosophical ramblings. Not my cup of tea at all.
The book’s 19th century origins are indicated by archaisms like wafture (of wings,) dropt (dropped,) wrapt (wrapped,) glode (glided,) clave (cleaved,) and staid (stayed.)
I would say this is firmly of its time. As an insight into the religious preoccupations of a late Victorian it is no doubt illustrative. It doesn’t much illuminate the human condition, though, and would not reach my 100 Best Scottish Books.
Phantastes takes much the same form as Lilith, which was originally published forty-three years after it. The narrator travels to a strange land – in this case Fairy Land – and has there certain adventures. On the face of it MacDonald had learned no new tricks over that time span but there was a slight difference in The Princess and the Goblin (1872) where at least there was in evidence something in the form of characters it was possible to care about.
In Fairy Land – reached seemingly by walking through a wood – the narrator (unnamed here, in Lilith at least he had a surname) among other things encounters a long dark shadow not attached to his body, deaths in various guises and more observations through a mirror.
As to MacDonald’s prose I can only agree with C S Lewis who says in his introduction that, “The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling.” But where Lewis detects a mythopoeic quality in Macdonald, I cannot.
MacDonald’s narrator seems to have forgotten Shakespeare’s dictum that, “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,” when he pleads, “‘But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all – without any place even for a heart to live in.’”
Again definitely of its time. I would not have read it but for it being in the same set of covers as Lilith (and that I only read because it was in that "100 best Scottish Books" list.)
A Mr Vane (no first name is ever provided) inherits a country pile and very soon finds it is visited by a strange apparition. This is the house’s long ago librarian, a coated gentleman who from the front appears to be a raven and has the ability to move through mirrors - taking Mr Vane with him.
This mirror world at first appears strange merely in an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland kind of way. The librarian/raven is prone to whimsical verbal contortions as in, “‘No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is and then what himself is. In fact nobody is himself and himself is nobody,’” but the milieu soon develops a darker aspect in the creatures Mr Vane encounters. Seemingly dead bodies, animated skeletons (one of whom expresses a deeply misanthropic view of wedlock in a conversation, where its expostulation, “‘This can’t be hell!’ is rejoined by another’s, ‘It must: there’s marriage in it!’”) Then there are Little Ones, who if they are not careful how they eat turn into giants. These giants capture Vane and might persecute the Little Ones but somehow manage to forget their origins and remain blind to them. Visiting a city called Bulika, whose princess wishes to kill all babies to forestall a prophecy of her demise, becomes a goal of Vane’s sojourn. Her existence is bound up with two leopardesses, one spotted, one white, which feature prominently from then on.
After Vane meets the librarian/raven’s wife the couple’s identities are revealed to be Adam and Eve. Adam bestows on Vane some cryptic warnings. Vane’s rescue and revival of a comatose - to all intents dead - woman leads to complications as this turns out to be Lilith, Adam’s former wife and the same princess who blights the existence of all who live under her sway. I say live, but there is some doubt as to whether these creatures are in fact alive or dead or indeed in some other state. After that it all got a bit mired in philosophical ramblings. Not my cup of tea at all.
The book’s 19th century origins are indicated by archaisms like wafture (of wings,) dropt (dropped,) wrapt (wrapped,) glode (glided,) clave (cleaved,) and staid (stayed.)
I would say this is firmly of its time. As an insight into the religious preoccupations of a late Victorian it is no doubt illustrative. It doesn’t much illuminate the human condition, though, and would not reach my 100 Best Scottish Books.
Phantastes takes much the same form as Lilith, which was originally published forty-three years after it. The narrator travels to a strange land – in this case Fairy Land – and has there certain adventures. On the face of it MacDonald had learned no new tricks over that time span but there was a slight difference in The Princess and the Goblin (1872) where at least there was in evidence something in the form of characters it was possible to care about.
In Fairy Land – reached seemingly by walking through a wood – the narrator (unnamed here, in Lilith at least he had a surname) among other things encounters a long dark shadow not attached to his body, deaths in various guises and more observations through a mirror.
As to MacDonald’s prose I can only agree with C S Lewis who says in his introduction that, “The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling.” But where Lewis detects a mythopoeic quality in Macdonald, I cannot.
MacDonald’s narrator seems to have forgotten Shakespeare’s dictum that, “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,” when he pleads, “‘But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all – without any place even for a heart to live in.’”
Again definitely of its time. I would not have read it but for it being in the same set of covers as Lilith (and that I only read because it was in that "100 best Scottish Books" list.)
July 10, 2019
Just read Phantastes of this two-book edition. I wanted so badly to enjoy this book. George MacDonald is my wife's favorite author (although, she's not into his fantasy, which this is). Also, one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis (who wrote the foreword to this book) says he crossed a frontier upon reading this book. It was so important in his life that he called MacDonald his master and said everything he wrote could be traced to him. I just couldn't get into the book, didn't understand most of what happened at a deeper level than just basics, and really don't like reading fantasy books. I feel like I owe an apology to the universe.
January 11, 2024
This edition has two books included: Phantastes (1858) and Lilith (1895). My major reason to read these books was that George MacDonald was a big influence on C.S. Lewis, and I definitely felt some of the vibes of the Narnia Chronicles here.
Both books felt very meandering to me, and the language was archaic. The protagonist in each book ignores good advice, but things work out anyway. There is some metaphysical allegorical writing happening. Between the lines, one can figure out MacDonald's view of salvation.
Modern fantasy writers seem more succinct, so this was a stretch for me. It was good to be exposed to these stories, but I will not be returning soon.
Both books felt very meandering to me, and the language was archaic. The protagonist in each book ignores good advice, but things work out anyway. There is some metaphysical allegorical writing happening. Between the lines, one can figure out MacDonald's view of salvation.
Modern fantasy writers seem more succinct, so this was a stretch for me. It was good to be exposed to these stories, but I will not be returning soon.
May 24, 2022
The first fantasy books I ever read, it started a lifetime love of th category.
March 17, 2025
A faerie romance for men and women.
May 11, 2012
I finished Phantastes so I will talk about that. It was a fantastic and imaginative story about a young man's journey. Ministered to me at that particular time in life. It is a classic, full of rich scenery and solid wisdom.
December 28, 2016
Although this is written in a very archaic language - the book is a visionary journey from beginning to end
The Father of fantasy - Macdonal inspired such names as Dunsany, Tolkien and CS Lewis
He is a legend
This edition is the one I have.
The Father of fantasy - Macdonal inspired such names as Dunsany, Tolkien and CS Lewis
He is a legend
This edition is the one I have.
August 14, 2013
I only read "Phantastes" this time...I'll come back to "Lilith" some other time.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews