This final installment of the Thomas Wingfold trilogy from 1891 adds yet further dimensions to the personal search for faith and the nature of belief, exemplified in the characters of Barbara Wilder and Richard Tuke. Both Barbara and Richard must ask whether or not God’s existence is true, what God’s character is like, and what demands are placed upon them as a result. Wingfold’s conversations with Barbara probe the foundations of belief with depth and profundity. Wingfold continually emphasizes the great truth: Everything depends on the kind of God one believes in. All three of the Wingfold books address the logic and reasonableness of the Christian faith. MacDonald’s characters must reason out belief. There will be no pat answers, no “humbug,” as he called it. Christianity is reasonable, sensible, intellectually consistent. God’s principles are true. This true-ness pervades MacDonald’s worldview as the foundation for Everyman’s spiritual quest. As always, the stories upon which MacDonald weaves his spiritual themes are compelling in themselves. There and Back is no exception, with mysteries, romance, a disputed inheritance, again with an old castle and library, and a full range of fascinating characters spread along the spectrum of personal development.

As editor of the magazine Good Words for the Young, MacDonald had a ready audience for “fairy tale” and “children’s” stories, and produced some of his most famous titles during this period of his writing life. The third of his stories for the magazine, The Princess and the Goblin, published in 1872, is universally acclaimed as MacDonald’s best pure fairy tale, and has been enchanting readers for well over a century. This story of princess Irene, her mysterious ageless namesake “grandmother,” and miner’s son Curdie surely provided inspiration for C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. G.K. Chesterton wrote of it in 1924, “I…can really testify to a book that has made a difference to my whole existence, which has helped me to see…a vision of things…so real….Of all the stories I have read…it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life. It is called The Princess and the Goblin, and it is by George MacDonald.” This edition for The Cullen Collection is unedited in any way.

This magnificant 1883 sequel to Sir Gibbie, and MacDonald's longest book, is a novel with everything—a Gothic castle with hidden rooms and passageways, good guys and bad guys, mysteries and inheritances. and poignant yet bittersweet love. Little does Gibbie’s friend Donal realize what he is in for when he takes a tutoring job at mysterious Castle Graham! Woven throughout, of course, are many signature tunes of MacDonald’s wisdom and spiritual insight, including one of C.S. Lewis’s favorite MacDonald lines, that God is “easy to please but hard to satisfy.” Along with Malcolm, Donal Grant presents one of MacDonald's most intricate and riveting plots, led by another of his stellar characters of virtue and truth. Its massive length, however (786 pages in the original), difficult Scots dialect, and numerous digressive tangents, illustrate better than any MacDonald title the need for condensed contemporary editions. Donal Grant is unique in the MacDonald corpus as being originally released in two different editions in Great Britain and America. This updated edition by Michael Phillips, which Phillips ranks as one of his favorite MacDonald titles, epitomizes the value and significance of The Cullen Collection in bringing the fiction of George MacDonald alive for new generations.