Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Phantastes by George MacDonald

A free copy of this book may be read online:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/macd...

JAN 2 - 8 Week 1 - Phantastes I - IV
JAN 9 - 15 Week 2 - Phantastes - V - VIII
JAN 16 - 22 Week 3 - Phantastes - IX - XII
JAN 23 - 29 Week 4 - Phantastes - XIII - XIV
JAN 30 - FEB 5 Week 5 - Phantastes - XV - XIX
FEB 6 - 12 Week 6 - Phantastes - XX - XXII
FEB 13 - 19 Week 7 - Phantastes - XXIII - XV and Book as a whole

For those who prefer to download a copy of "Phantastes" for off-line reading, Project Gutenberg has it available in several formats, at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/325

The same text is available as a free Kindle book:
https://www.amazon.com/Phantastes-Fae...

I suspect that this is also the base text for the fairly numerous Kindle editions at $0.99.

There are also several "Complete Works" or "Collected Works" Kindle editions, which are not particularly expensive. Strictly for an example: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess And Curdie, Lilith, Phantastes, Parables, Far Above Rubies and More

Besides paper editions of the novel, there are also some hardcopy editions which pair it with MacDonald's other fantasy novel for adults, "Lilith."

Of the hardcopy versions, I would avoid the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, which may be offered for little more than the cost of postage by some dealers (or could be expensive, in pristine condition). I am usually happy to mention that landmark series in the 1970s, but in this case the series editor, Lin Carter, felt called upon to abridge it. (I think he did this with just one other book in the series, William Hope Hodgson's two-volume "The Night Land.")

I have an older copy with both Phantastes and Lilith included (published by Eerdmans) and the Phantastes is only 167 pages. This doesn't seem like something that would have been necessary to abridge (unless I have an abridged copy as well). Any idea why Carter cut it?

Bryan wrote: " Any idea why Carter cut it? ..."

Yes. He seems to have disliked MacDonald's verses enough to "save" his readers from experiencing them. They aren't great poems, but they are interesting, and more than decorative. Other editors have left them in place. I think that there were some other small cuts, possibly surrounding the poems, but I just don't remember in any detail -- we are talking the 1970s here.

Carter's cuts to "The Night Land" were likewise an exercise in editorial judgment. Although William Hope Hodgson set the story in the far, future, he opened it in the seventeenth century, with a rather sentimental love story, and wrote that part in an unconvincing attempt at period prose. The cuts may have improved the book (Hodgson's prose is unimpressive, especially compared to his imagination), but it had a small fame in its original form, and a lot of readers probably wanted the full text, which was then almost impossible to obtain. (Fortunately or not, the full text is available for Kindle, and I think other e-readers.)

Lin Carter was an entertaining fantasy writer, and a good judge of the quality of a story, which made him a good anthologist and series editor. But, given that he was not preparing the books for their first publication (with a few exceptions), but offering them as lost classics to a new readership, he sometimes seems to have taken his editorial role a bit too seriously. (And Betty Ballantine, the science fiction and fantasy editor at Ballantine Books, didn't always catch what he was doing). His introductions to the series were sprightly reading, but usually didn't supply much useful information about the author or the book -- and what he did provide was sometimes flatly wrong.

By the way, if that is the Eerdmans edition with a piece by C.S. Lewis as an introduction, it definitely should be complete (although I never liked the rather small type) -- I once compared the two texts.

Ian wrote: "By the way, if that is the Eerdmans edition with a piece by C.S. Lewis as an introduction, it definitely should be complete..."

That's the one.

Thanks for the information on Carter. You may have mentioned this once before--after I asked the question, it occurred to me that it might have had something to do with some verse, and I can't think of any other source of that information than something you'd brought up before.

Bryan wrote: "Thanks for the information on Carter. You may have mentioned this once before..."

Very likely during the decision to read both "Beyond Good and Evil" and "Phantastes," but I haven't bothered to dig up that thread. I probably saved it, so I may take a look, but it isn't anything important.

An addition to Message 2:

I took another look at the several current Kindle offerings of MacDonald collections (from a search using "Works" as the title). I have several already, and have noticed that some of them use italics, where others don't bother, or differ in how they handle epigraphs (some in German) and other front-matter from the original publications.

I also noticed, for the first time, a 2017 collection as "Complete Works," at https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Works...
This includes the period illustrations by MacDonald's favorite illustrator, Arthur Hughes (some in color), apparently all of them, where other collections offer only a few examples. (This is also notably inexpensive, at $0.99, so you may want to try it for the art alone.)

I'm currently reading from the Pergamon "Collected Works of George MacDonald," which handles typographical issues, like italics, better than some of its competitors (see https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Work... ), and compare the lack of italics in the "Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald" (which also a bit more expensive) https://www.amazon.com/Delphi-Complet...

I haven't taken the time to compare their texts of "Phantastes" -- unless it was back in 2016, when I downloaded several of them. So I can't say how well they survived the digital transformation, but none of them stood out as bad transfers (i.e., strange characters in the text, floating page numbers in the middle of the digital "page," etc.).

Some of them arrange the fiction by category, others alphabetically by title, and there are probably differences in how useful the internal links actually are in navigating the very large files.

If you find one of them unbearable in this regards, at least right off, you probably could return it to Amazon with an explanation that it was poorly formatted -- although this is not something I would indulge in very often. (I've done it two or three times in the past six years or so, so I haven't had any problems with Amazon over the issue.)

Another supplement to Messages #2 (and to #4):

I had occasion to check something in MacDonald's "Lilith" this morning, and found, to my surprise (and chagrin), that I recognized there the verse which Lin Carter cut -- so it was NOT "Phantastes" that he abridged.

Sorry for the misinformation.

I think I had them confused because Lin Carter printed an extract of "Phantastes" in a later Ballantine Adult Fantasy anthology, as if it was new material (as I also noted above). So that was the the title which stuck in my mind as an example of Carter playing games with an established text.

The Wikipedia article on the novel in question begins: "Lilith is a fantasy novel by Scottish writer George MacDonald and first published in 1895. Its importance was recognized in its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fifth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in September 1969." But doesn't include information on the cuts.

I should also have mentioned that Eerdmans published stand-alone paperback editions of the two novels, in addition to their older omnibus, with some good cover art, and the same extract from C.S. Lewis they had used to introduce that volume.

My edition is from Hendrickson publishers and is edited by MacDonald's son. It's lovely, but after I opened it I became worried that it is abridged because some of the chapter are only 2 or 3 pages long. However, I cannot find anywhere where it says that it is abridged and in glancing through I see that it has poems throughout. Does anyone else have this edition?

Genni wrote: "My edition is from Hendrickson publishers and is edited by MacDonald's son. It's lovely, but after I opened it I became worried that it is abridged because some of the chapter are only 2 or 3 pages ... Does anyone else have this edition? ..."

No on the edition. And all editions with which I am currently familiar (I once had several available, but that was a long time ago) include Greville MacDonald's Preface, even those which omit the illustrations to which it refers. Yours is almost certainly not abridged (see below for why I warned about this).

A mixture of very short and very long chapters seems to be a practice of George MacDonald in "Phantastes," which came at the very beginning of his career. (I'm not acquainted with many of the very numerous others, so I can't say that he learned to pace his stories better.)

If you check Message #8, you will see that I there corrected my warning about a particular abridged edition -- it is the much-later "Lilith" that I *must* have had in mind, as the one where verse was omitted from the Ballantine edition.

"Phantastes" is also marked by stories-within-the-story, which can be confusing, as they do not do much to develop the plot (such as it is), but seem to carry thematic weight instead. Some chapters do run, in any edition, to only a few pages. And some of them are quite long.

In fact, Chapter 13 was excerpted as a "short novel" by Lin Carter, some years after "Phantastes" had appeared in the Ballantine series he was editing. (To which I attribute some of my confusion.)

Ian wrote: "Genni wrote: "My edition is from Hendrickson publishers and is edited by MacDonald's son. It's lovely, but after I opened it I became worried that it is abridged because some of the chapter are onl..."

Thank you, Ian. I actually first obtained a copy of the Lilith/Phantastes combo, but the introduction talked about cutting so I returned it. Now that I think about it, it could of referred to Lilith rather than Phantastes and I just didn't read it carefully. Anyway, thank you for putting my mind at ease about the abridgment.

Rosemary wrote: "Making note of the dates, I don't see chapter VIII anywhere in the schedule...?"

I suspect that chapter was supposed to be included in Week 2. In any case, Chapter VIII is only three pages.

Rosemary wrote: "Making note of the dates, I don't see chapter VIII anywhere in the schedule...?"

Hi Rosemary. Thanks for catching that omission and bringing it to my attention. The editor will be sacked.

The reading schedule has been updated to include Chapter VIII:
JAN 9 - 15 Week 2 - Phantastes - V - VIII

Am awaiting my copy in the mail!