The Wise Woman

By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

A Victorian-era fairy tale of one woman’s quest to redeem a selfish girl—from the Scottish author of The Princess and the Goblin.
 
This shorter fairy tale “Double Story” (by which title it was also published), tells the story of spoiled Princess Rosamond, and a mysterious wise woman whom she meets in the forest, and who continues to come to her in different guises which the princess does not always recognize. Considered by some as one of MacDonald’s “short stories” rather than a novel, this edition includes MacDonald’s insightful essay, “The Fantastic Imagination.” This edition of The Wise Woman for The Cullen Collection is unedited.
 
“Reading this book reminded me why George MacDonald’s wonderful fairy-tales have always been so treasured by Christian writers from CS Lewis to Madeleine L’Engle . . . an astounding, rich story.”—Vintage Novels

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795351921

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

The Wise Woman

The Cullen Collection

George MacDonald

The Wise Woman

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): 978-0-7953-5192-1

www.RosettaBooks.com

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

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

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

CONTENTS

Foreword to The Cullen Collection

Introduction to The Wise Woman by Michael Phillips

Introduction to The Wise Woman by Elizabeth Yates

THE WISE WOMAN

The Fantastic Imagination from A Dish of Orts

"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.

This series of new editions is an outgrowth and expansion of my series of edited MacDonald novels published by Bethany House in the 1980s. It includes many more titles and follows the same general priority of creating more readable editions that faithfully preserve the spirit, style, and flavor of MacDonald’s originals. Six of these newly added titles, which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not, however, been edited, updated, or altered in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as 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—have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, and are thus reproduced for The Cullen Collection with the same text 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

A Double Story of the Lost Princess

In previous volumes of The Cullen Collection, we have looked at several children’s titles George MacDonald wrote for Alexander Strahan’s magazine Good Words for the Young. The Wise Woman was the fifth to appear, though now the magazine had changed its name.*

By 1875, the entire publishing landscape had shifted for George MacDonald. He had been to America and back. He had new publishing relationships in the U.S. And his landmark novel Malcolm, published by Henry King, was just hitting bookshelves.

Strahan’s flagship child-ren’s magazine was now called, alternately, Good Things for the Young, or Good Things for the Young of All Ages. One thing that had not changed was MacDonald’s magic in the art of the fairy tale. Published in the magazine with the title, A Double Story, his new and shorter fairy story—again featuring what was becoming a staple of MacDonald fantasy, the wise woman of varying appearances and revelations—ran from December 1874 through July of 1875.

In another example of the impossibility of precisely fine-tuning the ambiguous progression of MacDonald’s writing and publications, we do not know exactly when the story was written, or where the book, newly titled The Wise Woman following serialization, fits into the publication chronology. It was published in 1875, the same year as Malcolm’s release. It is included here in The Cullen Collection on the basis of its dates of serialization, which came after Malcolm.

Once again we find MacDonald publishing the book edition with his old friend Alexander Strahan. As Strahan’s phoenix-like career continually seemed to reinvent itself, MacDonald’s loyalty to the man who had done so much for him in the late 1860s remained undimmed. However, this is the last MacDonald title for which Strahan would be the primary publisher. His name would continue to weave its way through MacDonald’s biography, with secondary editions bearing the Strahan imprint of Thomas Wingfold and Paul Faber, until at length he faded from view in the 1880s, with his brother-in-law A.P. Watt stepping onto center stage in MacDonald’s affairs.

This short fairy tale has the distinction of being published with more titles than any other MacDonald story:

A Double Story—magazine serialization in Good Things, 1874-75.

The Wise Woman: A Parable—Strahan & Co., 1875.

A Double Story—Dodd Mead and Lothrop in the U.S., 1876.

Princess Rosamond, a Double Story—Lothrop, 1879.

The Lost Princess; or The Wise Woman—Wells, Gardner, Darton, 1895.

The Lost Princess: a Double Story—Dent (U.K). & Dutton (U.S)., 1965.

The Wise Woman or The Lost Princess: A Double Story—Eerdmans in The Gifts of the Child Christ, 1973.

The message of The Wise Woman is a powerful one. Along with The Princess and the Goblin, it was one of the first of MacDonald’s fairy tales Judy and I encountered long before we had laid eyes on Malcolm. That first reading remains fond in my memory. Yet though an enduring favorite, The Wise Woman does not, to my more scrutinizing eyes these many years later, read as a polished work. Even in the simple guise of a children’s story there is evidence why George MacDonald’s books and stories sometimes benefit from editing. The fourth sentence of the story is over 400 words in length! (401 to be exact.) Hardly well-polished children’s fare.

It may be because the message of the story is so undisguised as a lesson to be good boys and girls (reviewers don’t like MacDonald preaching and giving lessons!) that this story has generally been overlooked. Biographers Rolland Hein and William Raeper almost entirely disregard it, as do most commentators on MacDonald’s fairy tale writings. Though it was published by a number of publishers during MacDonald’s lifetime, it apparently did not receive much attention or sell in great quantities. Nineteenth century editions of the book are scarce.

One woman who did not disregard this significant story is my forerunning mentor in MacDonald editing and