George MacDonald

The Princess and the Goblin Annotated George MacDonald

The Princess and the Goblin is a children's fantasy novel by George MacDonald. It was published in 1872 by Strahan & Co., with black-and-white illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Strahan had published the story and illustrations as a serial in the monthly magazine Good Words for the Young, beginning November 1870. Anne Thaxter Eaton writes in A Critical History of Children's Literature that The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel "quietly suggest in every incident ideas of courage and honor Jeffrey Holdaway, in the New Zealand Art Monthly, said that both books start out as "normal fairytales but slowly become stranger", and that they contain layers of symbolism similar to that of Lewis Carroll's work. Eight-year-old Princess Irene lives a lonely life in a castle in a wild, desolate, mountainous kingdom, with only her nursemaid, Lootie, for company. Her father, the king, is normally absent, and her mother is dead. Unknown to her, the nearby mines are inhabited by a race of goblins, long banished from the kingdom and now anxious to take revenge on their human neighbours.