Macdonald, George (1824-1905)

Scottish novelist and children's writer. David Elginbrod (1863) and Robert Falconer (1868) are characteristic novels but his children's stories, including At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872), are now better known. He was much influenced by the German Romantics, and mystical imagination pervades all his books, most notably Lilith (1895). His work inspired later writers including G K Chesterton, C S Lewis, and J R R Tolkien.

Macdonald was born in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and educated at the University of Aberdeen. He became a Congregationalist minister, but later turned to literature. In 1857 he published Poems and in 1858 Phantastes, a Faerie Romance. His numerous novels include Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865), The Marquis of Lossie (1877), and Sir Gibbie (1879). His finest writing is on the life he knew in Aberdeenshire and he excels when portraying pictures of boyhood.