Mary Marston

By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

A novel of one woman who transcends society’s concerns to stay true to her convictions—from the Victorian-era author of Malcolm.

One of MacDonald’s lengthy and powerful, but not widely studied, novels, Mary Marston is the only book in the MacDonald corpus with a woman featured in the title role. As one of MacDonald’s many strong and memorable leading ladies, Mary exemplifies a life of dedication to Christ, self-sacrifice, and obedience to parents. We encounter here a touching portrayal of that earthly relationship so dear to MacDonald’s heart, because it so embodied man’s relationship with God—the relationship between fathers and their sons and daughters. Of the diverse range of characters found within the pages of this novel, Michael Phillips writes, “Taken together, their individual lives make fascinating reading. They are so diverse, sometimes so petty and foolish, their intertwining relationships so humorous at times . . . we observe human growth at work . . . always progressing in one direction or the other—sometimes straight, sometimes crooked. It is a complex character mix in many shades of gray . . . containing complicated character flaws without easy resolutions. I find it one of the most real array of characters in the MacDonald corpus.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795352171

George MacDonald

George MacDonald (1824 – 1905) was a Scottish-born novelist and poet. He grew up in a religious home influenced by various sects of Christianity. He attended University of Aberdeen, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry and physics. After experiencing a crisis of faith, he began theological training and became minister of Trinity Congregational Church. Later, he gained success as a writer penning fantasy tales such as Lilith, The Light Princess and At the Back of the North Wind. MacDonald became a well-known lecturer and mentor to various creatives including Lewis Carroll who famously wrote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fame.

Book preview

Mary Marston

George MacDonald

Introductory material © 2018 by Michael Phillips

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5217-1

www.RosettaBooks.com

The Cullen Collection of the

Fiction of George MacDonald

1. Phantastes (1858)

2. David Elginbrod (1863)

3. The Portent (1864)

4. Adela Cathcart (1864)

5. Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

6. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

7. Robert Falconer (1868)

8. Guild Court (1868)

9. The Seaboard Parish (1868)

10. At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

11. Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

12. The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

13. Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

14. The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

15. Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

16. Malcolm (1875)

17. The Wise Woman (1875)

18. St. George and St. Michael (1876)

19. Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

20. The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

21. Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

22. Sir Gibbie (1879)

23. Mary Marston (1881)

24. Castle Warlock (1881)

25. The Princess and Curdie (1882)

26. Weighed and Wanting (1882)

27. Donal Grant (1883)

28. What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

29. Home Again (1887)

30. The Elect Lady (1888)

31. A Rough Shaking (1890)

32. There and Back (1891)

33. The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

34. Heather and Snow (1893)

35. Lilith (1895)

36. Salted With Fire (1897)

37. Far Above Rubies (1898)

The introductions to the 37 volumes form a continuous picture of George MacDonald’s literary life, viewed through the prism of the development of his written legacy of works. While each book can of course be read on its own, every introduction picks up where that to the previous volume left off, with special attention to the title under consideration. The introductions together, as a biography of MacDonald’s life as a writer, are compiled in Volume 38.

38. George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

New editions of George MacDonald’s classic fiction works updated and introduced by Michael Phillips

CONTENTS

Foreword to The Cullen Collection

Introduction to Mary Marston

NOTE: As the introductions to the 37 volumes of The Cullen Collection form a continuous portrait of George MacDonald’s life, and as many of the introductions contain comprehensive and detailed discussion and analysis of the title in question—its plot, themes, and circumstances of writing—some first-time readers may choose to skip ahead to the story itself, saving the introduction for later, so as not to spoil the story.

1.     The Shop

2.     A Business Saturday

3.     Sunday at Thornwick

4.     Godfrey Wardour

5.     Godfrey and Letty

6.     Tom Helmer

7.     Durnmelling

8.     Under the Oak

9.     Letty’s Confusion

10.   The Hut in the Field

11.   Letty’s Secret

12.   William Marston

13.   Mary’s Dream

14.   Hesper’s Fate

15.   Ungenerous Benevolence

16.   A Meeting in the Moonlight

17.   Godfrey’s Search

18.   In the Morning

19.   Mary and Godfrey

20.   Mary in the Shop

21.   The Wedding Dress

22.   Mr. Redmain

23.   Mrs. Redmain

24.   Offer and Acceptance

25.   Mrs. Redmain’s Drawing Room

26.   Mary’s Reception

27.   Mary’s Position

28.   Mr. and Mrs. Helmer

29.   Mary and Letty

30.   The Evening Star

31.   Sepia

32.   Honour

33.   The Invitation

34.   A New Life

35.   The Musician

36.   A Change

37.   Lydgate Street

38.   Godfrey and Letty

39.   Relief

40.   Words of Righteousness

41.   The Helper

42.   The Ten Lepers

43.   Mary and Mr. Redmain

44.   The Hat and the Ring

45.   Suspicion

46.   Joseph Jasper

47.   The Sapphire

48.   Reparation

49.   Another Change

50.   Turnbull and Marston

51.   Thornwick

52.   William and Mary Marston

53.   A Hard Task

54.   A Summons

55.   A Friend in Need

56.   The Next Night

57.   Eyes of Evil

58.   Breaking In

59.   Breakings Up

60.   The Song of Love

61.   The End of the Beginning

"Papa seems so quietly happy."

—Louisa MacDonald, May 4, 1872, from Deskford (near Cullen)

"Papa does enjoy this place so much."

—Louisa MacDonald, May 6, 1872 from the Seafield Arms Hotel, Cullen

"Papa oh! so jolly & bright & happy…Papa was taken for Lord Seafield yesterday."

—Louisa MacDonald, Sept. 2, 1873, from Cullen

"Papa is very poorly. He ought to go to Cullen for a week I think."

—Louisa MacDonald, October 5, 1873, from London

FOREWORD

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

The series name for these works of Scotsman George MacDonald (1824-1905) has its origins in the 1830s when the boy MacDonald formed what would be a lifelong affection for the northeast Scottish village of Cullen.

The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, writing from Portsoy or Cullen, he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, as soon as possible. The broad white beach of Cullen Bay, the Seatown, the grounds of Cullen House, the temple of Psyche (Temple of the Winds,) Cullen Burn, the dwellings along Grant Street, Scarnose, and especially Findlater Castle, all seized the youth’s imagination with a love that never left him. MacDonald continued to visit Huntly and Cullen throughout his life, using his childhood love for his homeland as the backdrop for his richest novels, including what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm, published in 1875.

We therefore honor MacDonald’s unique relationship to Cullen with these newly updated editions of his novels. In Cullen, in certain respects more than in any other place, one finds the transcendent spirit of George MacDonald’s life and the ongoing legacy of his work still magically alive after a century and a half. This release of The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald coincides with a memorial bench and plaque established on Cullen’s Castle Hill commemorating MacDonald’s visits to the region.

To those readers familiar with my previous editions of MacDonald’s novels, I should make clear that eighteen of the volumes in this new series (including this one) are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown in the publishing world, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort. Imperfect as they were in some respects, I am enormously grateful for those editions. They helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions, though identical at many points, have been expanded—sometimes significantly. In that sense they reflect MacDonald’s originals somewhat more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors. Nineteen additional titles have been added. The thirteen realistic novels among these have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six, which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them for The Cullen Collection with the same texts by which they are generally known.*

Dedicated followers of all great men and women continually seek hints that reveal their inner being—the true man, the true woman. What were they really like? What made him or her tick? Many biographies and studies attempt to answer such questions. In George MacDonald’s case, however, a panorama of windows exists that reveals far more about his person than the sum-total of everything that has been written about him over the years. Those are the novels that encompass his life’s work. The volumes of this series represent the true spiritual biography of the man, a far more important biography than life’s details can ever tell.

In 1911, six years after his father’s death, George MacDonald’s son Ronald wrote of the man with whom he had spent his life:

"The ideals of his didactic novels were the motive of his own life…a life of literal, and, which is more, imaginative consistency with his doctrine…There has probably never been a writer whose work was a better expression of his personal character. This I am not engaged to prove; but I very positively assert…that in his novels…and allegories…one encounters. . .the same rich imagination, the same generous lover of God and man, the same consistent practiser of his own preaching, the same tender charity to the sinner with the same uncompromising hostility to the sin, which were known in daily use and by his own people counted upon more surely than sunshine." *

Thirty years after the publication of my one-volume biography George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, it now gives me great pleasure to present this thirty-seven-volume biography of the man, the Scotsman, the prophetic spiritual voice who is George MacDonald. *

How fitting is the original title in which Ronald MacDonald’s sketch of his father quoted above first appeared, From A Northern Window. For any attempted portrait of the man George MacDonald becomes at once a window into his homeland as well.

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

An Ideal of God’s Daughterhood

The transition out of the decade of the 1870s into the 1880s signaled major changes in the life of George MacDonald and his family. The only work published in the first year of the new decade was a small, unpublicized, private printing of poetry. It is as if, with the writing (1878) and publication of Sir Gibbie (1879), MacDonald’s writing life paused, drew in a deep breath, and took stock of the past and prepared for a future in Italy. Mary Marston, the first novel by MacDonald published in the new decade, did not come until two years after Sir Gibbie. *

That single book of poetry, privately printed and not advertised, some consider one of MacDonald’s most significant works. Indeed, it perfectly encapsulates MacDonald’s taking stock of his life, feeling a sad weariness from life’s journey thus far as he looked ahead to whatever uncertainties lay in his future.

This pause and reevaluation in MacDonald’s writing life at the end of the 1870s was forced upon him by a catastrophic event that took place early in 1879. Ironically, the publication of one of MacDonald’s most memorable books that is so full of light brought little joy to its author. Early in 1879 as Sir Gibbie was in the final stages of serialization, MacDonald’s fifteen-year-old son Maurice, always delicate with the family curse of weak lungs, and sick for much of the preceding winter, contracted pneumonia, developed a fever, and died suddenly in March.

George and Louisa were devastated. They had been surrounded for years by death, but never had it come so close as this. Even daughter Mary’s death the previous year had not come as a complete surprise. Her slow decline over many years had enabled them to prepare for it. But Maurice was taken unexpectedly in the prime of his youth. He was, according to many, MacDonald’s favorite child. He was MacDonald’s Gibbie, perhaps even more his little Diamond.

As his moods alternated between grief and gratitude, MacDonald struggled to see beyond his pain.

He was quite a child by himself—in the eyes of his brothers and sisters as well as ours, he wrote of Maurice. Though not so strong as his elder brothers, he was the most active, and the best swimmer and diver of them all. He had been sickly and had what seemed a cold for part of the winter, but was better, when one Sunday morning about 3 o’clock he was seized with severe hemorrhage. That ceased but was followed by inflammation of the lungs, and on the 18th day he died. We had hoped almost to the last hour. He was just over fifteen. It is a sore affliction, but though cast down we are not destroyed. Jesus rose again glorious, and to that I cleave fast. My boy is of course dearer to me than before, and we shall find him again, with his love as fresh as the life that cannot die. Not a murmur escaped him. His contentment was lovely and his soul strong to the end—his obedience perfect—and his rest in God marvellous. ¹

MacDonald was only fifty-four. But suddenly he felt old and tired. Part of him died with his son. He drifted into a season of brooding pessimism. Why had he survived so many brushes with death? Why could he have not been taken instead of his son?

As an outlet for his grief, and as a means of wrestling with the despondency that threatened to overwhelm him, MacDonald took to his pen. As had been his custom all his life, he poured out his deepest feelings, especially his doubts and personal struggles, in verse. We know that MacDonald began Mary Marston in 1879. That it was not serialized and not published for two years, probably indicates that Maurice’s death slowed its progress considerably. It is most likely that a good part of MacDonald’s emotional energy for rest of the year, and perhaps into 1880, was devoted to this singular poetic work, set out in 366 seven-line stanzas, one for each day of the year. Generally known as Diary of an Old Soul, its full title as given on the title page reads, A Book of Strife in the form of The Diary of An Old Soul.

The Diary was the only book published in 1880 as the new decade opened—MacDonald’s poetic chronicle of the brooding days of 1879 even as his wee Gibbie was warming hearts elsewhere around the world. MacDonald made no attempt to engage a publisher for the Diary. He had it printed privately and did not attempt to publicize it. As word of it slowly circulated, no one knew anything about it, or where to find it.

Standing as it does as the only book—and a very different one, unique in the MacDonald corpus—published in 1880, The Diary of an Old Soul perhaps typifies the transition from the eighteen-year stage of MacDonald’s fiction writing life in England, to what would become an exact equal eighteen years of writing in Italy.

In the eighteen years between 1863 and 1880, MacDonald published eighteen novels, culminating with Sir Gibbie. Thirteen more novels yet lay in the future during the next eighteen years of his writing life from 1881 to 1898.

At this precise midpoint of his life as a novelist, separating all that had come before with everything that was yet to come, almost as a symbolic window into the depths of the soul of the novelist who had given the world so much, yet who was a deeply human and at that moment a suffering man, stood The Diary of an Old Soul.

In the midst of George and Louisa’s grief, however, life gradually went on. Even as he was writing the Diary, just months after Maurice’s death, they returned to England in the summer of 1879 for a lecture tour, to the accompaniment of the MacDonald family’s dramatic performances of Pilgrim’s Progress.

Before this return to England, Rolland Hein cites a personal and very human occurrence:

"Their determination to return to Britain was clinched one day when a large package of ‘Scotch luxuries’ arrived, courtesy of Helen Powell, much to MacDonald’s delight. The haggis, oatcakes, shortbread, and rock candy were all it took. ‘Nothing agrees with my construction so well as the meal of my youth—in any and every shape, and when I can’t eat nothing [sic.] else I can eat that,’ MacDonald wrote in gratitude." ²

When the lectures and performances were over, they returned to Italy, which was beginning to look like their permanent home. In spite of Mary’s and Maurice’s deaths, the warm Italian climate definitely improved George’s health. They bought a parcel of land and George designed a huge new home to be built in Bordighera. It was completed at the end of 1880, the year of The Diary’s publication. They christened it Casa Coraggio and it would be home to George and Louisa through the 1880s and 1890s. It provided ample room for entertaining, for lecturing and preaching, with Sunday evening gatherings open to the public. As a result, over the years MacDonald became an informal spiritual leader to the sizeable English community of the Italian coastal region. ³

MacDonald himself, griefs notwithstanding, health notwithstanding, myriad demands on his time notwithstanding, travel and dramatic productions and lectures all notwithstanding…was a writer.

Through his pain, his physical suffering, his ups, his downs…he wrote.

Laid low with bronchitis…he wrote.

Waiting to go on stage as Mr. Greatheart…he wrote.

On his way back and forth from England to Italy…he wrote.

In the train…he wrote.

He never lost his focus—that God had given him a mission to communicate Fatherhood and practical obedient Christlikeness to the world through his characters and stories. Thus, eventually a new round of novels began to come from his pen.

And once MacDonald caught his breath, so to speak, put the events of 1879 and 1880 behind him, and was well settled in his new Italian home, a fresh outbreak of fruitfulness followed. Writing The Diary of an Old Soul had been, in a sense, healing, cathartic, purgatorial in a way, perhaps creatively therapeutic. MacDonald faced his doubts, his griefs, his lonelinesses, and came out of them more convinced than ever of the goodness of the divine Fatherhood. Emerging from his personal dark night of the soul, he was ready to embark on the second half of his writing career.

The first novel of the new decade following the Diary was this one, Mary Marston.

An intriguing sidebar to the next phase of his writing career was MacDonald’s use of a typewriter. The new machine had been introduced in the 1870s but did not enter widespread common use until the mid-1880s. We do not know which books he may have typed, and which MacDonald continued to write in longhand. From a typewritten letter to his cousin James at the Farm dated March 28, 1886 ⁴, it is obvious that MacDonald was by then comfortable with the new machine. Whether he used it for all his writing thereafter, whether or not he felt equally creative with it, we may never know. It is fascinating, however, in considering the evolution of Lilith, that its first draft (1890) was written in longhand, and its last (1894) with a typewriter.

Rolland Hein comments:

Emerging advances in technology impressed him…he was delighted with them. He remarked in 1888 of talking to his host on the telephone at the latter’s business some eight miles away as though he were in the same room. By this time he was regularly using a typewriter, and even Louisa began to type much of her correspondence, all in capital letters. ⁵

MacDonald probably wrote Mary Marston over an extended period between 1879 and 1880. It was never serialized and not published until 1881.⁶ The book cannot be considered among MacDonald’s major works. Yet through the words of William Marston, whose unseen presence, like that of David Elginbrod and Cosmo Warlock the elder, suffuses the spiritual fabric of the whole, MacDonald offers as succinct a statement as we will find of the lasting legacy he would give his own sons and daughters. Perhaps anticipating the day he will follow his beloved Maurice, it is this simple message MacDonald would leave the world:

Be a downright real Christian.

More than anything, George MacDonald’s novels are distinguished by their character studies. It is his probing insight into human nature, and the responses of men and women to the spiritual forces operating upon them, that set his fiction apart. However the critics may scoff at the artistic defect of intruding himself into his narratives and his preachiness, and whatever other flaws they seem intent to expose, George MacDonald’s characters alone are sufficient to raise his novels to the rarefied air of greatness.

Though MacDonald’s genius as a storyteller originates from his ability to skillfully weave character growth through a complex and sometimes mysterious plot, it is the characters that linger longest in the memory. Indeed, absence of plot hardly diminishes this impact. His characters are real, their growth fascinating, their responses to God no less imperative, whether or not exciting events are swirling about them.

In Mary Marston, like Paul Faber Surgeon from two years earlier, we find ourselves in the midst of another extended sower parable. In both books, MacDonald allows us to witness a broad range of human responses to truth—from those characters in whom the seed strikes no root, to those in whom it is choked out by worldly cares, to those Satan has in his grasp, to those others whose soil is rich and in whom God’s priorities flourish.

It is almost as if MacDonald opens this book with an unspoken first line that reads, Behold, a sower went out to sow… And with that as his foundation, he sets up an intriguing array of diverse characters, gives us something of their background and situations, and then proceeds to let them interact with one another. The threads between them are occasionally loose. We as readers meet many individuals, though within the world of the story, some of them never cross paths the others.

Taken together, their individual lives make fascinating reading. They are so diverse, sometimes so petty and foolish, their intertwining relationships so humorous at times. And as we watch Mary, Tom, Hesper, Letty, Sepia, Joseph, Mr. Turnbull, Mr. Redmain, Godfrey and Mrs. Wardour, Mewks, and the others, we observe human growth at work—sometimes forward, sometimes backward, but always progressing in one direction or the other—sometimes straight, sometimes crooked. It is a complex character mix in many shades of gray, without easily identifiable good and bad, many of the individuals containing complicated character flaws without easy resolutions. I find it one of the most real array of characters in the MacDonald corpus.

As I read Mary Marston recently, I found myself enjoying it not primarily for the story, but rather because I became engrossed in the lives of the characters. I didn’t want the book to end. I wanted to continue following their paths of inner growth to see where they all ended up.

I also found myself unexpectedly identifying with each of the characters in different ways. They revealed my own pettiness, false priorities, motives of self. I found myself hungry anew to rid myself of trivialities.

I noticed again how far in advance of his era MacDonald was. He always gave women their respectful due. Like Jesus, he understood the role of women (and men and children and animals and nature) as God created them to function in the world, without the perverted exultation of self-rights so rampant, not merely within the women’s movement but throughout all of today’s culture. Along with respect, MacDonald subtly brings several women’s concerns into the story—women in the workplace, the role of submission to an ungodly husband, a marriage where husband and wife both work, women as spiritual leaders, or a marriage where the woman takes the lead in some ways. One reader shared with us that she had written an entire study group curriculum for troubled and struggling women based on A Daughter’s Devotion, the earlier edition of this book. MacDonald’s lead character here is a woman who humbly teaches and counsels the men of the story. It is Mary, no doubt named after his recently deceased daughter, who is the priest (Christ’s representative) in two of the most powerful bedside scenes since Malcolm. The development of these women’s themes, as we watch Mary mature in her independence, are especially fascinating when we consider how long ago this book was written.

Humble and obedient servanthood is always at the core of MacDonald’s ethic of personhood. Capturing perhaps the essence of her character, if not the book’s fundamental theme, when Mary experiences typical Victorian snobbery from those above her on the social scale, and from those of her peers who do not understand her spiritual perspectives, her view is, "What can it matter to me whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says Daughter to me?"

In this age of succinct recipes for growth and compact formulas of salvation, the idea of goodness has come for some to connote almost a spiritual evil. But goodness is a good thing. Over and over Jesus extolled the good man. That’s why goodness is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and why, in the New Testament, we are commanded over and over to be good, do good, and to love goodness.

George MacDonald understood this truth. He brought into his books no pious fog about goodness being as filthy rags. He understood the Bible. He understood God’s priorities. He understood that goodness is the essential starting point toward Christlikeness.

Therefore, the notion that some of his characters are too good for believable fiction is an absurd critique. It is precisely because MacDonald’s characters run the gamut from good to bad, that they serve meaningfully as models as we ourselves attempt to conform our lives to that supremely good Man who was and is the central figure in the most dramatic story ever told.

In Mary Marston we encounter a good and virtuous leading lady. Too good? Not for me. Why do we love Jesus? Because he possessed a tragic fatal flaw and was therefore a great Shakespearean anti-hero? Of course not. It is because he was the perfectly good man sent from God—God’s Son.

I want my role models and heroes to be good people. I want to surround myself with good friends and acquaintances who will help my own goodness grow. Mary Marston, like so many of her colleagues in MacDonald lore, is my friend, and thus helps me toward that end. She does so because she is good.

I probably love this book so much because Mary is a female Malcolm. The two together form my ideal man and woman. In one way or another, both Mary and Malcolm find their way into every one of my own novels. Like Malcolm, Mary has a temper, she can be roused to anger, she will stand against evil and falsehood, speak her mind, confront the enemy boldly. But where Malcolm or Robert Falconer will lay a man out on the ground with their fists (which, I must admit, isn’t exactly my style, nor was it MacDonald’s), Mary displays her courage differently. On behalf of another, she will face the very demons of hell without flinching. But for herself, even when being swindled, she will not lift a finger.

I love, too, this depiction of yet one more aging MacDonald widower-saint, like the elder Warlock, whose deepest desire is to pass on a legacy of Christlikeness, in this case, to his daughter. This heart’s desire resonates deeply within me because it is my own deepest passion for my own three sons.

Not every character is good. MacDonald offers no syrupy fiction where all in the end reform their ways, repent, and join the straight and narrow path. There is a realism here. These men and women are true to life. Not everyone repents. We meet some really bad people, genuinely shallow people, stupid people, and wise people.

The rationale for this approach of MacDonald in his fiction comes straight out of the gospel—not all men and women receive the seeds of gospel truth in the same way. In this parable of seeds sown into diverse human soils, all the individuals we meet must make choices that will determine in which direction their growth will progress. The variety of their responses—to Mary, to their fellow creatures, to husbands and wives, and to the still small voice of God—illustrate again that timeless truth of the secret of the kingdom of God. MacDonald does not endorse modernism’s re-writing of the sower parable to contain only three kinds of people—all flawed and bad. MacDonald knew that there is such a thing as good soil, where good people send down roots unto Christlikeness. So he will write of good people as well as every other kind.

Humanity responds to truth in different ways. MacDonald will not detract from the impact of that truth by artificially manipulating the responses of his characters. As much as Mary longs to see a breaking of self in Mr. and Mrs. Redmain, she knows that in the end, each stands at the crossroads of decision alone. The final scene perfectly sets MacDonald’s stamp on that all-important spiritual crossroads—two couples walking in opposite directions—exactly as he says in Chapter 51: It is not where one is, but in what direction he is going.

When Mary Marston came along, for unknown reasons MacDonald’s primary fiction publisher, Hurst and Blackett, bowed out. Instead, the London firm of Sampson Low took it on.

Lest we think we have heard the last of Alexander Strahan, the entry of the publishing firm of Sampson Low into the world of MacDonald has roots extending back to England’s coterie of publishers of the 1860s. At that time the firm (then called Sampson Low, Son, and Marston) had its office next to Strahan’s, and functioned in some ambiguous role of partnership with Strahan, possibly as one of his many investors, even as his agent. Obviously the folks at Sampson Low (and one wonders who Marston is!) knew of MacDonald and his work, and may even have been involved in some capacity in the Argosy serialization of Falconer.

Patricia Srebrnik writes:

"There is some mystery…in the fact that the Argosy was first advertised in October 1865 by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, a firm that was neighbor to Strahan and Company on Ludgate Hill. In addition to publishing a list of its own, this house served as a wholesale distributor for many other publishers, and had distributed Good Words for a time before Strahan and Company moved to London. The novelist Charles Reade, who was a contributor to the first volume of the Argosy, referred to Sampson Low…as Strahan’s ‘agent on the matter.’ This may mean that Sampson Low invested some capital in the venture and was granted in return the right to distribute the magazine and collect a commission." ⁷

We are reminded again that the lines between publishers were somewhat fluid, publishers representing one another in different capacities, possibly illuminating Strahan’s role with Hurst and Blackett, Routledge, and Tinsley Brothers on MacDonald’s behalf back in those heady days of Strahan’s growing empire.

Fifteen years later, Sampson Low now stepped into the void created by Hurst and Blackett’s departure from MacDonald’s world. Deciding to publish MacDonald, they did so aggressively, not only with new titles but with reprints, producing some of the most gorgeously-bound volumes in the MacDonald corpus, with full gold-leaf embossed covers—true works of art. In the two years 1881 and 1882 they published a remarkable seven volumes, including Mary Marston and reprints of Guild Court and The Vicar’s Daughter (somewhat odd selections), followed the next year by Orts, The Gifts of the Child Christ, Castle Warlock, and Weighed and Wanting.

Though Mary Marston has not generally been considered one of MacDonald’s major novels, it is his seventh longest book and enjoyed a robust initial publishing history. Though not serialized in magazine form, this title was published in more book editions in its first year than any other MacDonald title—breaking the former record held by Annals. After being released by Sampson Low in three volumes in 1881, five more editions quickly followed within months—a remarkable statistic, six book editions in its first year! Three of these were in the U.S. (MacDonald’s friends at Lippincott publishing what they called an Authorized Edition, and Appleton and Munro’s Seaside Library publishing what were no doubt pirated editions). Tauchnitz in Germany also published Mary Marston in their small two-volume series of MacDonald titles. And finally, Sampson Low also released it in a handsomely bound gilt and embossed one-volume edition that same year that curiously reads Fifth Edition on the title page, which it almost certainly was not (unless they were counting the U.S. and German editions).

This record, however, comes with an asterisk. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood was serialized while Mary Marston was not. Counting all initial publications, therefore, both books can boast six first year editions.

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2017

NOTE ON FOOTNOTES: For the reader’s ease in referencing frequently quoted titles, I have dispensed with the scholarly ciphers, more mystifying than helpful for the average fiction reader. These books will therefore be noted in the footnotes below as follows, rather than with the formal notations of op. cit., loc. cit., ibid., etc.

Greville, Biography—George MacDonald and His Wife by Greville MacDonald, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1924.

Hein, Mythmaker—George MacDonald, Victorian Mythmaker by Rolland Hein, Star Song Publishing, Nashville, TN, 1993.

Raeper, MacDonald—George MacDonald by William Raeper, Lion Publishing, Tring, England, 1987.

Shaberman, Study—George MacDonald, A Bibliographical Study by Raphael B. Shaberman, St. Paul’s Bibliographies, Winchester, Hampshire, U.K., 1990.

Srebrnik, Strahan—Alexander Strahan: Victorian Publisher, by Patricia Thomas Srebrnik, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1986.

---

1 Greville, Biography, pp. 489-90, GMD letter to W.C. Davies, March 19, 1879.

2 Hein, Mythmaker, pp. 315-16, quoting letter to Helen Powell, 7 February 1879.

3 NOTES ON OPEN HOUSE GATHERINGS AT MACDONALD HOME IN BORDIGHERA

Of these gatherings in Bordighera, William Raeper writes: "The most magnificent feature of the whole house was…a massive room where the MacDonalds could mount plays or hold religious services. It could seat two hundred people, or take four hundred standing…It was not long before the MacDonalds were firmly established as part of the Bordighera community, and Casa Coraggio…threw open its doors to all who wanted to enter there. Louisa quickly became the church organist at All Saints, the English church…

"MacDonald’s idea of having a Sunday evening gathering in his home was one that actually came about, and these were soon a regular feature of expatriate life in Bordighera. It was as if the vision he had had in Manchester thirty years previously, of gathering people about him in the little room in Renshaw Street, had finally been fulfilled. As many as a hundred people would crowd into the large salon, resplendent with hangings and paintings and flowers, and at eight o’clock MacDonald would emerge from a side door, often wearing a black skull-cap, and with a book in his hand. He looked very much like a prophet now, for as he had grown older, so his hair and beard had coloured snowy-white, heightening his mystical and authoritative presence…

"These gatherings were held for a good many years and were supplemented by Wednesday afternoon At Homes at which MacDonald would lecture on Shakespeare or Dante or some other literary topic. But in the firelight and candlelight of the Sunday evenings, he would begin by reading poetry, sometimes his own, often pieces by Herbert or Vaughan, and would follow these up with a chapter, or part of a chapter from the Bible, commenting as he read. Then there would be a prayer, and a hymn and an anthem, usually first rehearsed by the girls, and after that a talk on a text or a special topic. MacDonald taught like an old philosopher or rabbi discoursing to his disciples." (Raeper, MacDonald, pp. 352-53).

4 A copy is reproduced in Shaberman, Study, p. 137.

5 Hein, Mythmaker, p. 373.

6 NOTES ON CHEAP LIBRARY EDITIONS OF MACDONALD’S BOOKS

Mary Marston presents another example of the extreme ambiguity of the sequence of MacDonald’s writing and the publication of his books. The book was not serialized but, like Thomas Wingfold and most of MacDonald’s novels, was pirated for the Munro Seaside Library, one of the earliest and most prolific of cheap library editions in the U.S. Munro had already pirated ten MacDonald titles by the time Mary Marston came along. Mary Marston was not published in book form until mid 1881, yet the date listed on the Munro library edition states, Copyright January of 1881. Without a prior edition in magazine or book form, where did Munro get a completed manuscript to pirate and release months before the first publication of the book? We know that in some cases U.S. publisher George Routledge and Sons (Annals, Seaboard, Malcolm, Marquis, etc.) arranged for the use of the U.K. plates for their editions. But how did the pirates get copies of manuscripts before publication in the U.K. or the U.S.? The logistics of publishing piracy are complicated and nearly impossible to penetrate.

If Munro’s date on Mary Marston is accurate—it would make their pirated library edition the true first edition of the book. This, however, is highly unlikely, as is the veracity of their copyright notice. They had no right to issue a copyright. Yet the question remains: Where did Munro get a copy of the manuscript? This is the problem of trying to determine the exact sequence of MacDonald’s publications. The dates do not always coincide with other known facts. This will be discussed further in the Introduction to Castle Warlock.

A quote (albeit a lengthy one!) from Volume 6 of The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: U.S. Popular Print Culture 1860-1920 (Christine Bold, ed., Oxford University Press, 2012) is wonderfully instructive in understanding the world in which George MacDonald was struggling to get his message out and at the same time make a living.

"The small, inexpensive, mass-produced, paper-covered reprints of mostly European fiction known as ‘libraries’…had a profound effect on nineteenth-century publishing…

"For years, the libraries appeared with three columns of tiny print to a page, enabling a publisher to reduce a complete novel to under nine pages…

"The cheapness of the libraries made them immensely popular. According to an 1876 Atlantic Monthly article, bound books or even ordinary paper novels at fifty or seventy-five cents a copy ‘were absolutely beyond the means of the average working man or woman’ (Shove 1937: 6). In contrast, the reprint libraries ranged in price from five to twenty-five cents but most cost ten or twenty…This was a time when a skilled worker earned a dollar a day and a woman about a quarter; to pay a dollar for a hardback book equaled one-sixth of a man’s weekly wage…

"Cheap library reprints brought to the public a profusion of European literary works…

"The New York Evening Express reported the reprints ‘are driving over the land like a snow-storm, finding their way into the rudest huts and dingiest workshops’ where ‘working girls, and apprentice-boys’ read them (‘Cheap Libraries’ 1882: 35)…

"In 1879, M. F. Sweetster reported in the Christian Union that approximately 8,000,000 copies of the libraries were sold in their first four years… ‘The sales thus recorded are simply amazing’, he declared (1879: 489). In an interview with the paper, George Munro, publisher of the Seaside Library, said he had already issued more than 600 numbers of the library and sold nearly 6 million copies. Harper & Brothers reported publishing almost 80 numbers of the Franklin Square Library, with sales of each number varying from 12,000 to 30,000…

"The libraries began in late 1874, or possibly in early 1875…

"The number of libraries grew quickly. George Munro’s Seaside Library, which made its debut in 1877, soon ‘dominated the market’ (Tebbel 1975: 489). In five months, Munro published eight new titles a week in the library (Shove 1937: 9). Other publishers, perceiving Munro’s success, also began issuing libraries…

"Of all the libraries…the four most important were Munro’s…Seaside Library (1877-86, 2,081 issues), John Lovell’s Lovell’s Library (1882-9, about 1,470 issues), Harper & Brothers’ Franklin Square Library (1878-93, 758 issues), and Norman Munro’s Munro’s Library…(1883-8, approximately 849 issues)…

"The libraries at first caused little attention in the regular trade. Publishers did not imagine such flimsy, poorly made publications would pose a threat. Soon, however, they realized that was not the case…

"Before the advent of the libraries, the trade felt secure because of its gentlemen’s agreement of trade courtesy. Under this system, if a publisher advertised his ‘priority claim’ and paid royalties for advance sheets from abroad, he became the American publisher of that book. In 1882, J.B. Lippincott & Co. explained in the Critic,

Before the advent of the Seaside, and kindred ‘Libraries’…the ‘trade courtesy rules’ (still in force with all reputable publishers, but ignored by the ‘pirates’) gave the authorized American publisher some protection in his ventures, we were able to pay large sums for the advance sheets of foreign books (Lippincott & Co. 1882: 867).

"As publishing scholar Madeleine B. Stern observed, however, ‘Courtesy of the Trade’ allowed major standard publishers to control the reprinting rights of English and foreign books…essentially…a monopoly…

The library publishers…much preferred piracy to trade courtesy. John Lovell…warned others, ‘Go heartily for the courtesy of the trade" and—starve. (1879: 471). Led by Lovell and the Munro brothers, library publishers pirated texts from costlier editions of Appleton, Lippincott, Harper, and Holt (Shove 1939: 7). In the 1880s, the Munro brothers had the facilities to produce paperback books in ten hours because each owned a ‘sawmill’—a many-storied building which housed the machines for typesetting, presswork, and binding, so the entire publication process could be done under one roof (Comparato 1971: 124). The pirates never made apologies for their actions. Instead, they emphasized their noble purpose in publishing the libraries: they referred to their responsibility to educate the masses, the people’s right to buy literary masterpieces at affordable prices, and their obligation to serve the poor. George Munro opined that if ‘pirate’ was how some contemporaries regarded him, ‘posterity’ would call him a ‘reformer’ (qtd. in Shove 1937: 18)…

"On the matter of royalties some pirates said they paid