Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
    Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
    Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
    Ebook523 pages

    Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

    By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The story of a young minister and his flock—first in the Scottish author’s Marshmallows Trilogy including The Seaboard Parish and The Vicar’s Daughter.  
     
    MacDonald’s first major English novel, published in 1867, was set in the village of Arundel on the downs south of London near the south channel coast. It was the site of MacDonald’s first and only pastorate as a newly married minister in 1851-53. This book is wonderfully descriptive of the region, with autobiographical hints of MacDonald’s outlook as a young pastor. Chronicling the daily life of one of MacDonald’s fictionalized “ideal ministers”—perhaps a portrayal of the shepherd-pastor MacDonald had himself hoped to be—the Annals proved one of his most popular novels.
     
    First released in the Sunday Magazine, which was intended for “Sabbath reading,” Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood was quickly published in numerous book editions and contributed in a significant way to MacDonald’s growing popularity in America. Though less spine-riveting of plot, the three volumes of the Marshmallows Trilogy spawned by Annals provide some of MacDonald’s most homiletic and deeply spiritual writings.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 7, 2019
    ISBN9780795352683
    Author

    George MacDonald

    L'auteur George MacDonald, est un pasteur écossais du XIXe siècle qui a écrit plus de 40 romans. Certains romans s'apparentent au genre fantastique, d'autres sont des romans réalistes dans le style victorien, c'est le cas de Malcolm. Il a influencé des auteurs comme W. H. Auden, G. K. Chesterton (célèbre écrivain anglais du début du XXe siècle) et J. R. R. Tolkien (L'auteur du Seigneur des anneaux). C. S. Lewis (connu en particulier pour les chroniques de Narnia) considérait George MacDonald comme son maître, il en a même fait un personnage de son livre Le grand divorce.

    Read more from George Mac Donald

    Related to Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

    Titles in the series (38)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Sanctuary of Beauty

      Aug 10, 2021

      Sanctuary of Beauty
      1 min read

    • Article

      New Chapters Unfolding

      Nov 22, 2022

      When first I saw the vast English house that would become my home, I was overawed. An elegant redbrick Victorian vicarage in Oxford, tucked away next to a lake, with a rambling garden and an ancient willow. We toured the property as part of my husban

      6 min read

    • Article

      Story Of A City

      Apr 9, 2023

      Story Of A City
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      May 4, 2022

      * With the Platinum Jubilee upon us, it’s time to look forward to the 70th anniversary of the Young Elizabethan, too. Founded in 1948 as Collins Magazine for Boys & Girls, it was renamed the Young Elizabethan to celebrate the Queen’s Coronation. In 1

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Library

      Apr 17, 2020

      The Library
      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Dec 19, 2021

      by Nikki Crutchley HarperCollins — $35 Many things make this thriller stand out. For a start, the narrators are reliable. That’s refreshing, these days. Crutchley tells her story in more than one voice and time period, but all are clearly handled and

      8 min read

    • Article

      Once Upon A Time...

      Sep 1, 2022

      Back in 1992, folklorist, writer and poet Neil Philip published a book called The Penguin Book of English Folktales. Meticulously researched, it was a treasure trove of English folk stories, featuring versions of more than 100 folktales told as they

      1 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Jan 7, 2021

      The World Of Writing
      4 min read

    • Article

      Grey Pride

      Jun 21, 2017

      Grey Pride
      16 min read

    • Article

      Necrolog

      Jun 16, 2022

      John Nicholson was the only child of Captain W Ivan Nicholson and Eleanor (Nella) Zollner, daughter of the Danish Consul. In 1946, when John was six, the family moved to Flying Rat Cottage in Great Dunmow, Essex, where they kept poultry, plus a goat

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Sep 21, 2022

      The Old Un’s Notes
      6 min read

    • Article

      An Autobiographical Tradition

      Dec 11, 2021

      An Autobiographical Tradition
      2 min read

    • Article

      Around Britain At The Gallop

      May 31, 2023

      Around Britain At The Gallop
      5 min read

    • Article

      Kilvert’s Diary

      Feb 22, 2023

      Kilvert’s Diary
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Best Books Of The Year

      Dec 13, 2023

      The Best Books Of The Year
      8 min read

    • Article

      Speed, Sugar, Steeples And Songs

      Jul 13, 2023

      This superbly designed book tells the story of Lord Hesketh’s 1970s Formula One racing team. It is full of patriotism and panache and, at one stage, ‘Penthouse Pets’ adorning his lordship’s gleaming bonnets. Aged 22, from his family seat of Easton Ne

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Land Is Yours

      Mar 3, 2021

      The Land Is Yours
      3 min read

    • Article

      The California Gaze

      Apr 1, 2023

      The California Gaze
      7 min read

    • Article

      Toxic Masculinity at the End of the World: On David R. Bunch’s ‘Moderan’

      Jan 18, 2019

      1. “Quaint they were, these records, strange and ancient, washed to shore when the Moderan seas finally unthawed.” So begins David R. Bunch’s first book, Moderan, which appeared as a paperback original from Avon in 1971. It was to be his only book re

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Sword Of Swords

      Nov 23, 2022

      (Birlinn, £22) THE perfect sword—the highest expression of the blacksmith’s art—is arguably a pattern-welded, 7th-century blade of iron and steel, buried three centuries later at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland. After 1,000 years, the rusted blade

      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Nov 25, 2020

      I WAS delighted that Loyd Grossman sees the obelisk as ‘the mark of every great city’ (‘Making a point’, November 11), but it may also be the mark of a minor country house. I obtained ours not from the sands of Egypt, but from that other repository o

      3 min read

    • Article

      Reader's Letter

      Oct 20, 2021

      SIR: The fifth person (marked anonymous) in the photograph accompanying the piece about Chips Channon in September’s Oldie is in fact my mother, Patricia Morrison-Bell. As a child, I would listen unnoticed to many hushed conversations about Chips, an

      5 min read

    • Article

      Around The World In 100 Plants

      Oct 26, 2022

      Simon Barnes (Simon & Schuster, £30) WE have become used, in recent years, to the convention of 100 short essays as a means of raising the reader’s eyebrows and setting away a never-ending series of big ideas from the starting point of an everyday o

      5 min read

    • Article

      In Pursuit Of The Light

      May 10, 2023

      In Pursuit Of The Light
      6 min read

    Reviews for Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

    4/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood - George MacDonald

      Annals of a Quiet

      Neighborhood

      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): 978-0-7953-5268-3

      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 Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

      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. Walk About a New Town

      2. Old Rogers

      3. What the Sunset Said

      4. My First Sunday at Marshmallows

      5. My First Monday at Marshmallows

      6. The Mill and the Cottage

      7. The Coffin Maker

      8. Visitors from the Hall

      9. More Parishioners

      10. Oldcastle Hall

      11. The Two Weirs

      12. The Bishop’s Basin

      13. What I Preached

      14. The Organist

      15. Jane Rogers and Richard Brownrigg

      16. My Christmas Party

      17. On God and Mammon

      18. Reflections

      19. Christmas Afternoon Visits

      20. The Avenue

      21. Young Weir

      22. Differences Healed

      23. My Pupil

      24. Old Rogers’s Insight

      25. Dr. Duncan’s Story

      26. The Language of Handel

      27. The Church Rate

      28. Judy’s News

      29. The Invalid

      30. Mood and Will

      31. The Devil in Thomas Weir

      32. The Devil in Catherine Weir

      33. The Devil in the Vicar

      34. An Angel Unawares

      35. Two Parishioners

      36. Satan Cast Out

      37. The Man and the Child

      38. Old Mrs. Tomkins and Samuel Weir

      39. God in Catherine Weir

      40. Calm and Storm

      41. A Sermon to Myself

      42. A Quiet Passing

      43. A Council of Friends

      44. The Letter

      45. Confrontation

      46. Deliverance

      47. The Parson and His Wife

      48. Tom’s Story

      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 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 to the original Bethany House series of novels. The thirteen realistic novels among these (including this one) 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, 2019

      INTRODUCTION

      1867

      A Noble Calling

      George MacDonald did not keep a diary. If he had, we would no doubt see the days and weeks and months between David Elginbrod in 1863 and Robert Falconer in 1868 filled with such entries as:*

      Wrote for nine hours today…wrote for fifteen hours today…had to see a publisher, only wrote for six hours…sick and in bed, managed to write for four hours…feeling better, wrote for ten hours…back on feet—seventeen hours at my desk…finished new edition of Portent, got started with two chapters of Little Grey Town…worked on sermons, wrote two poems, corrected proofs of fairy tale compilation and had a good six hours on Falconer…edited The Consuming Fire for sermon collection, added two stanzas to The Disciple, and wrote a sermon to be put somewhere in Annals sequel whenever I get to it…worked thirteen hours on Falconer—love his development…two chapters on Antiphon but spent most of day on Guild Court, some rewriting on Falconer Alps sequence…lunch with Ruskin, four chapters on Guild Court, wrote several letters…interview with King’s committee in city, only managed five hours at desk in PM… started Annals sequel, reviewed Argosy’s Falconer—needs major overhaul before bound edition.

      But there is no diary. We don’t know when he wrote what or in what order, when the ideas came, or where they came from. All we can say is that between 1863 and 1868 MacDonald produced an avalanche of writing and was probably actively juggling up to four projects at a time.

      He wouldn’t have had time to keep a diary! His correspondence fills in a few of the gaps. Mostly, however, we must satisfy ourselves with the publication dates of his books and extrapolate from there. Even that does not tell the whole story, as the example of The Portent’s magazine publication so many years before David Elginbrod illustrates.

      What we know, then, is that following the publication of David Elginbrod in 1863, the creative and imaginative floodgates were opened in George MacDonald’s brain. He began writing with unimaginable ferocity. The next several years represent an explosion of productivity. We can only speculate on how his days were spent, whether he wrote early in the morning or late at night, what was his schedule, and how much of the day was spent with Louisa and the children (probably not much). Such practicalities fade into the unknown and we are left simply looking at his resulting writing output.

      After David Elginbrod, a new edition of The Portent was released in 1864, along with Adela Cathcart and a new edition of Poems called A Hidden Life and Other Poems. Alec Forbes was released in the summer of 1865, by which time he was at work on what would be his next published novel, Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood. The reviews of Alec Forbes were good, sales brisk, and he was on his way.

      For the rest of that year and the next, the quantity of work flying from beneath MacDonald’s pen is mind-boggling by any stretch of the imagination. The two years 1867-68 saw the publication of eight books—some of them extremely long. And this was before typewriters, copy machines, and computers. Everything was hand-written, hand-corrected—thirteen books published between 1863 and 1868. Equally remarkable is how good some of them are when considering everything else MacDonald was doing at the time—traveling, teaching, lecturing—not to mention his frequent debilitating illnesses. Meanwhile, the pressing needs and activities of the family must have been time-consuming and energy draining. When Within and Without was published and his career was just beginning, he and Louisa had three children. By the time Robert Falconer was released, they had eleven.

      With writing opportunities suddenly opening in many directions, MacDonald pushed himself almost relentlessly. He was enjoying a respite from the financial pressure with more regular teaching and lecturing. His health was good. (In early 1865, he wrote: I have turned a huge corner, and am past forty and invalidity. I can have a bad cold now without either bronchitis or asthma. I am amazed at myself. ¹) Nevertheless, he was encouraged to take a break.

      He had long wanted to visit the continent. Therefore, at the urging of A.J. Scott and his new friend John Ruskin, who loved the Alps and offered to help finance the trip, in July of 1865 George MacDonald traveled to Switzerland with two friends for two weeks.

      His son Greville wrote, In the summer of 1865 my father took a long desired and much needed holiday in Switzerland—and without my mother, she being hardly in fit health to go with him. ² What Greville doesn’t say is that the reason his mother was hardly in fit health to go with him was because she was seven months pregnant, hardly, it would seem, an auspicious time for MacDonald to leave.

      Everyone understood that MacDonald’s physical condition was precarious. Those who loved him felt a responsibility to shepherd his health, Louisa most of all. At the same time his constant need for breaks and holidays to recuperate from his work rings somewhat hollow alongside what Louisa was enduring…every day…without benefit of breaks and holidays. She was pregnant a majority of the time as well. If anyone in the MacDonald household needed a break one would think that person to be Louisa. She had been married fourteen years and was in her eighth month of pregnancy with a tenth child. Yet she is the one keeping the home fires burning while he is off to Huntly, off to Switzerland…dinner in the city…a weekend at the country house of friends. We mustn’t forget, of course, that middle class families, which would have characterized the MacDonalds, usually had at least one servant, as George and Louisa nearly always did. It isn’t as if Louisa didn’t have help. And as her older daughters grew they helped with the younger ones. Nevertheless, reading about a holiday in Switzerland, I must confess, perplexes me a bit when I think of Louisa in her eighth month.

      All that said, it was a different time. In middle and upper-class Britain, even mothers were not necessarily involved with their children from morning till night. Nannies and tutors and governesses did most of the parenting until children were shipped off to boarding school. P.G. Wodehouse, in the late 1800s, scarcely knew his parents. They were employed in Hong Kong and he and his brothers were essentially raised by a governess in England, not even a relative, until time for boarding school. Such a scenario was not uncommon. George MacDonald was probably a typical nineteenth century husband and father. For all we know he may have been more involved with his family than most. It’s hard to evaluate such intangibles after 150 years of cultural change.

      Certainly there were times during these difficult years when Louisa had the chance to breathe a little easier, when George or her parents or one of her sisters would take care of a few of the children on occasion and allow her a brief respite with only four or five to feed and bathe and keep busy. There is no reference, however, in Greville’s biography of his parents or their correspondence of any pure holiday for Louisa.

      In any event, in the summer of 1865, MacDonald was off to Switzerland.

      Rolland Hein, possibly dramatizing it a little, writes:

      "As MacDonald crossed the Channel to Belgium, he was haunted by the memory of Louisa’s ‘sad face’ as she saw him off. The tone of the letters he wrote all during the trip suggest his determination to atone, at least in part, for her being left behind by describing the sights in careful detail. Now well along in expecting their tenth child, Louisa could not possibly have gone. Bravely, she accepted her lot: a time alone with the nine…

      Her letters to MacDonald describe her struggle to cope as best she could. ³

      Writing to Louisa of his adventures seems small atonement, as does his talk of wishing she could share in the sights—"I must take you there for a month some day…will you come, sweet wife?" ⁴ —as if her coming some day was up to her. I’m sure she would love to have been there. But she couldn’t have shared in such experiences unless he made it possible, which he never did.

      Though MacDonald was repulsed by the cities of Germany and France, and to a degree their people as well, the cathedral of Antwerp and later the Alps made lasting impressions. MacDonald’s experiences among what he called God’s steeples became the setting for Robert Falconer’s spiritual epiphany, and appear with great narrative power in Wilfrid Cumbermede. After climbing the tower of the Strasbourg cathedral—a feat he tried at every cathedral he visited—he wrote, I am sure the only cure for you and me and all of us is getting up, up—into the divine air. I for my part choose the steeple-cure for my weariness. How will it be when I get amongst God’s steeples? ⁵

      After two weeks, he returned to England physically and emotionally drained. So much for recuperation.

      He had probably begun the writing of Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood prior to the trip to Switzerland, no doubt immediately after completing Alec Forbes. And though he may have been exhausted after returning to England, he had to keep moving.

      Annals was the first of MacDonald’s lengthy realistic novels to appear in serialization (much shorter, The Portent had appeared in 1860), and thus continued the expansion of his widening popularity. His next eleven novels would all be serialized by various magazines and newspapers before appearing in bound book form.

      At some point about this time, MacDonald met the man who would figure so prominently in his future—publisher and fellow Scotsman Alexander Strahan. Approximately ten years younger than MacDonald, Strahan was a true publishing visionary who built a magazine colossus in Great Britain comprised of numerous periodicals targeted toward different readerships and their interests. Though he later published bound books as well—some of MacDonald’s most gorgeous books bear the Strahan imprint—his reputation was based on his visionary approach to the world of magazine publishing.

      At the time he met MacDonald, presumably around 1865, Strahan’s star was on the rise and he was shaking up the publishing world with his magazine Good Words, launched in 1860 under the editorship of well-known writer, clergyman, and Scotsman, Norman MacLeod. Good Words was decidedly evangelical in orientation, as its title and editorship imply. The magazine published sermons (many of them MacLeod’s) as well as stories illustrated by Arthur Hughes and other Victorian artists.

      Not everyone in the publishing world was pleased. Strahan was rewriting the norms of publishing, and was having a great deal of success doing so. His efforts during the latter half of the decade of the 1860s created a publishing empire, and MacDonald, in a sense, rode Strahan’s coattails into history.

      It turned out, as is so often the case, that Strahan’s enterprises grew too fast. Ultimately his vision proved also his undoing. But during his heyday, which coincided perfectly with the rise of MacDonald’s reputation, no one was more pivotal in launching MacDonald into the upper echelons of the literary world than Alexander Strahan.

      It may be an exaggeration to say that Strahan made MacDonald. Yet Strahan took MacDonald out of the world of the literati and into the mainstream. He made MacDonald a household name. Expensive, clothbound triple deckers could never have accomplished this. They were outrageously beyond the resources of common men and women. Strahan made MacDonald’s writings accessible to huge audiences in six-penny magazine editions. And the fact that they were serialized kept readers coming back for more…and more…and more.

      Strahan’s enormous impact in MacDonald’s career is one of the huge untold stories of MacDonald’s biography. An entire book would hardly cover it. MacDonald’s career would have been entirely different had he not been fortunate enough to enjoy Strahan’s coattails at this very moment when Strahan’s fortunes were burgeoning. And on the other side of it, MacDonald provided materials to Strahan that the publishing world had never experienced before.

      The instant MacDonald’s books began appearing in Strahan’s magazines everything changed. Without these serializations, MacDonald’s message might never have reached the masses. What energized the partnership all the more was the simple reality that the two men became lifelong friends—fellow Scots, both deeply principled, visionaries and Christian brothers who truly loved one another.

      With Strahan committed to MacDonald’s spiritual message and vision, publishing most of his new work first in periodical then later in bound book form, George MacDonald’s career soared. Strahan would continue to be the most influential single individual in MacDonald’s publishing life for the next fifteen years.

      Strahan’s highly successful magazine Good Words (in the late 1860s the most widely read periodical in the English-speaking world ⁶), though decidedly religious, as were many of the magazines of the day, and as befit Strahan’s Presbyterian orientation, was yet criticized by many religious conservatives. They were accustomed to sectarian publications containing long sermons without illustrations. They saw Good Words as catering to the low, worldly, popular market. It wasn’t pious enough to suit them. This was an incongruous judgment with Norman MacLeod at the helm. Yet the tone of the magazine was different, upbeat, visually attractive. Strahan was a free-thinking, practical, creative man who loved the artistic, fanciful, and imaginative. His vision was to bring good, wholesome, even religious literature out of the pews and into the streets.

      Strahan later published MacDonald’s first two volumes of sermons, and a volume of fairy tales, and a volume of poetry, and several of MacDonald’s novels. Strahan was publishing’s renaissance man of the 1860s. He loved all genres, and he believed in MacDonald.

      Aware of the criticism, instead of modifying Good Words, Strahan started a new magazine designed especially for Sabbath reading, more churchy and less populist, that he hoped would quiet the critics. In what would be a pattern repeated many times in the coming years, his vision outran his resources. He borrowed a sizeable sum and launched the Sunday Magazine, its first issue released in October of 1864. The magazine was therefore heavily in debt from the outset—its copyright mortgaged, so to speak, and assigned to Strahan’s debt-holders. Strahan’s visions were always fueled by extensive borrowing, a fact which eventually caught up with him when the debts became too massive to sustain. In the meantime, like most of his periodicals, the Sunday Magazine was also wildly successful and eventually rivaled Good Words in circulation. ⁷

      Purely conjecture on my part—I envision the opportunistic Strahan, having taken note by then of his fellow Scotsman, perhaps seeing in him a kindred spirit, approaching MacDonald with something like the following:

      "Mr. MacDonald, I’ve been watching your writing. You have a fresh style and important message, and I would like to help you reach more people. I’m starting a new periodical called the Sunday Magazine. I would be honored to serialize something of yours. Do you have anything in the works that would be especially suitable for Sabbath reading? I’ll pay you well for it."

      MacDonald would obviously also have heard of Strahan, who was at the time a bigger name in London literary circles than MacDonald himself. No doubt Strahan’s final comment caused MacDonald’s ears to perk up.

      I’m happy to meet you at last. As a matter of fact, I might have something. I am working on a book about a minister and his parish and its people.

      It sounds perfect. What’s it called?

      "Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood."

      However the arrangements came about for this inaugural partnership between the two men—Strahan probably thirty, MacDonald forty—Annals began its serialization in October of 1865, exactly one year after the inauguration of the Sunday Magazine, and continued until September of 1866, by which time MacDonald was on to Robert Falconer and Guild Court. Thus began what would be the pattern for most of the rest of MacDonald’s career—serializations followed by book publication.

      MacDonald’s writings instantly began reaching a vastly expanded audience. Initial subscriptions to the Sunday Magazine were approximately 100,000, with 10,000 additional copies of each issue shipped to the United States. ⁸

      With the first-edition triple deckers probably selling one, two, perhaps three thousand copies (it is doubtful any of them sold more than 5,000, if that), it is obvious why the Strahan connection made MacDonald a household name in a way that never would have been possible otherwise.

      Such levels are confirmed by a letter to Macmillan in 1876, in which MacDonald is attempting to secure a publisher for Thomas Wingfold Curate. MacDonald wrote, I wish to find a publisher for the 3 vol. edition…For the right to print 1000 copies…

      This is but a portion of the letter, which also states that the book was then appearing in another of Strahan’s magazines at the time—see introduction to Thomas Wingfold Curate for the complete text of the letter. Even at the height of his career, the quantities printed and sold of the triple deckers were extremely modest. ⁹

      With MacDonald’s triple decker books selling a thousand or two copies, now suddenly the serializations of his stories were reaching 100,000 readers! No wonder his career took off.

      It spite of this remarkable season of output in the mid-1860s, however, MacDonald was not quite yet making a comfortable living as a writer—now with thirteen mouths to feed. His payments were increasing with every success. (Quantity helped as well—four or five copyrights sold for £50 or £100 each was the equivalent of one big sale.) But he still had to teach, preach, and lecture at every opportunity. Much of his time and energy of necessity was therefore devoted to other pursuits than writing. He was still lecturing at Bedford Ladies College in London, but the pay was small and it was creatively unsatisfying. When a major position opened for a literature professorship at Edinburgh University in 1865, MacDonald applied for it. With high hopes, he compiled an impressive portfolio of recommendation letters and testimonials.

      During a trip north to further his bid for the position, he met Calvinist turned skeptic Thomas Carlyle, and the two visited Thomas Erskine at his home at Linlathen. Along with Scott and Maurice, Erskine was another bold Christian leader speaking on behalf of universal atonement and the inclusive Fatherhood of God. MacDonald also took the opportunity to visit Huntly.

      In the end MacDonald was turned down for the Edinburgh post. Louisa viewed it as a blessing in disguise. The northern climate would surely have had seriously detrimental health consequences. It may have been small consolation, but in early 1866, MacDonald was offered the opportunity to teach evening classes at King’s College, London. This same year, under the influence of F.D. Maurice, he joined the Church of England.

      While Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood ran in Strahan’s new Sunday Magazine from late in 1865 into 1866, MacDonald was preparing for another volume of poems, a new book of sermons, and putting the final touches on a fairy tale collection, all of which would appear the following year.

      MacDonald’s association with author and philanthropist John Ruskin, begun in 1863, had by this time developed into a deep friendship. A wealthy man, Ruskin now occasionally stepped into the shoes formerly occupied by Lady Byron (who had died in 1860) with loans and other financial assistance. MacDonald’s friendships were eclectic—two of his closest friends being skeptic Ruskin and minister F.D. Maurice.

      In introducing one of George MacDonald’s singular portrayals, in a sense, of an ideal clergyman into the quiet neighbourhood of the Annals, it is appropriate to highlight the role of F.D. Maurice in MacDonald’s life. Maurice had already appeared by inference in David Elginbrod, and while not modelling Harry Walton of Annals specifically upon Maurice, it is yet important to remember how much affection MacDonald had for the ministry, the church, and the pastoral role. The hypocritical ministers one encounters in his books are so sharply drawn that it is easy to forget that his good clergymen probably outnumber the shallow hypocrites.

      It was at Maurice’s church that MacDonald met Octavia Hill, the young social activist, also a friend and co-worker of Ruskin’s, who became such a close friend to the entire MacDonald family.

      Meanwhile, the backlog of writing from prior years was paying off. A new volume of stories was released which included the major fairy tales that had appeared in Adela Cathcart, along with some new ones. It was called Dealings with the Fairies. Also published that year was his first volume of theological writings, Unspoken Sermons. (The words First Series would later be added to the title when future volumes were released.) Finally, MacDonald’s new book of poems, The Disciple and Other Poems, was also published. All three of these new titles were published as books by Strahan. The friendship, and MacDonald’s trust in Strahan, developed quickly. Within another two or three years, Strahan would be MacDonald’s primary book and magazine publisher.

      The lengthy poem The Disciple is noteworthy as recounting MacDonald’s quest to work through his spiritual doubts in the early 1840s. For those who have not read it, I would point to Chapter 9 of George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller for samples of this powerful and spiritually dramatic poem. Though published in 1867, and though the poetic form may not be the most familiar to many readers, The Disciple stands as one of the most significant but often overlooked personal expressions to pour from the depths of MacDonald’s heart. It is impossible not to be moved by the pathos of MacDonald’s Falconer-like quest during his student years to find the truth about God amid the lingering vapors of Calvinism’s oppressive theology. *

      When he wrote The Disciple is unknown. But its window into young George MacDonald’s determined struggle to find faith in the midst of youthful doubts is a profound piece of autobiographical writing. The anguish of soul is so vividly expressed that it seems it must have been contemporarily written with the experiences themselves. The eloquence of style, however, is so mature and polished that MacDonald clearly wrote it much later.

      Whenever it was that he reflected back to that earlier time in his life to record his thoughts in verse, he was able to do more than just remember his doubts. The moment one begins reading, it is obvious that MacDonald is feeling the emotions and confusions of his youth all over again. The Disciple stands as a seminal milestone in the developing MacDonald corpus, a significant companion to Robert Falconer in illuminating George MacDonald’s progression through doubt into faith.¹⁰

      Recognizing that MacDonald’s Scottish roots never left him, the view is often expressed by myself and others that George MacDonald’s Huntly and Cullen novels are more true to place than the rest. They bring the author’s abiding affection for these two Scottish towns alive with striking realism. Merely walking their streets draws one into the worlds of Robert Falconer, Malcolm, Alec Forbes, or Ranald Bannerman with all the magic of being swept through a picture on the wall and finding oneself suddenly aboard the Dawn Treader. Time evaporates. The buildings are unchanged in 150 years. Walking along Cullen’s Grant Street or Huntly’s Duke Street places you in the story. Such is the formidable gift of MacDonald’s pen, that his settings live no less than do his characters.

      There is, however, one fictional English setting in MacDonald’s oeuvre which rivals those in some of his best Scottish novels. That is the fictional Marshmallows of Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, a true-to-place depiction of Arundel south of London, five miles from the Channel coast between Chichester and Worthing. (In this realism should also be included the fictional Kilkhaven, a representation of Bude and Kilkhampton on the north Cornwall coast, setting for The Seaboard Parish, sequel to Annals.)

      MacDonald’s brief pastorate at the Trinity Congregational Church in Arundel, so ignominiously cut short because of his supposed heresies, was one of the great disappointments of his life. Coming when he was still a young man in his late twenties, newly married, and representing all the hope and optimism of his first professional position, the rejection of his ministry and message stung deeply—branding MacDonald with that ignominious label sticket minister reminiscent of Murdoch Malison and Alexander Graham. Having, as the saying goes, been there myself, I know that such wounds never entirely go away. They heal, but scars remain. The pain fades, and even gives way to gratitude for how life has turned out. Yet memories of the hurts from youthful and impressionable turning points in life cannot but remain as pivotal influences. I do not think I am far wrong in reading similar goads and forces into MacDonald’s subsequent struggle to come to terms with what God wanted him to do, after the rug of ministry had been so summarily pulled out from under him.

      At the time Annals was written, more than a dozen years had passed. At last MacDonald was finding his voice and his true pulpit, though an unexpected one. From being ousted in Arundel, to finding himself unable to gather a following of more than a dozen or two friends in Manchester, through his writing he now had a following of tens and soon to be hundreds of thousands.

      In later years his son Ronald wrote:

      He…went on to tell me that, having begun to do his work as a Congregational minister, and having been driven, by causes here inconvenient to be stated, into giving up that professional pulpit, he was no less impelled than compelled to use unceasingly the new platform whence he had found his voice could carry so far. ¹¹

      In his mind’s eye from the vantage point of fifteen years, MacDonald now gazes back on the Arundel experience. Perhaps, he thinks, it is time to put those brief years into perspective, and bury whatever lingering pain remains.

      By then, George MacDonald was surely thankful for the circumstances that had led (or forced) him to pursue writing as a career path. Gratefulness aside, however, such experiences must be faced and laid to rest within the human soul.

      I therefore read Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, and the two sequels that comprise what may be called the Marshmallows Trilogy, as George MacDonald’s season of coming to terms with his own Arundel experience. He does so by depicting, in a sense, the ideal pastorate and the kind of minister he wanted to be—it is the story of the ministry he had hoped to have. And he sets it in the very town where he did not have it.

      As his fictional Harry Walton sets out on his first walk through town after his arrival, then gradually meets the men and women of his new flock, how many of his thoughts and feelings are autobiographical we can only guess. MacDonald’s choice of Arundel as his setting for Harry Walton’s story is surely far from accidental.

      Did MacDonald go out on just such a walk on his first evening in Arundel? Are any of the characters of the story drawn from those—most of whom would have still been there—who had heard the young newly married minister preach, having no premonition that they were listening to one of Christendom’s new prophetic voices?

      What did his erstwhile parishioners think now? One wonders how many of his former congregation read his annals of an Arundel pastorate, how many perhaps found themselves in its pages, and whether the deacons who had treated the young minister so contemptuously now harbored regrets. Suddenly the man they had sent packing was a rising literary star.

      Interesting, however, is the fact that, as near Arundel as he lived for most of the rest of his life, we have no indication that MacDonald ever visited the town again, nor walked its streets, as he did Huntly and Cullen, in preparation for this writing. Probably some pains remained.

      As one who considered the pastorate myself, I have always revered this story, along with Thomas Wingfold’s, as giving MacDonald’s vision of true ministry. Both should be read by every minister, to keep focused on the bull’s eye of ministry. By the time of this writing, MacDonald could have been offered a dozen pulpits. Indeed, such offers were made throughout his life, some for highly prestigious churches at far higher salaries than what he was making from his books. But that era in his life was past. He valued the pulpit and he continued to preach without remuneration whenever given the opportunity. But he would never again serve as pastor to a church congregation.

      Not involving such a range of interesting characters nor plot intricacies, nor following the ever-popular Bildungsroman model (a novel focusing on the psychological and moral growth of its main character into adulthood), it is somewhat surprising how immensely popular Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood turned out to be. After its serialization in the Sunday Magazine, it was published by Hurst and Blackett in three volumes dated 1867. (It was probably released at the very beginning of that year, if not in the closing days of December, 1866.) With this title, MacDonald publications exploded.

      That same year, 1867, saw four new editions of Annals quickly follow the three-volume first edition. Within months Hurst and Blackett released a one-volume edition to follow their triple. Germany’s Tauchnitz was not far behind, publishing the Annals in two small-sized volumes to match their Alec Forbes. And Alexander Strahan published a one-volume edition of Annals in his own name.

      Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood also had the distinction of being the first of MacDonald’s novels published in the United States. It was published by Harper Brothers, almost surely pirated without compensation either to MacDonald or Hurst and Blackett. From this beginning, Harper would continue to be a significant player in MacDonald’s story for the next three decades.

      All told, five separate editions of Annals in three countries were released in its first year—a record that remained unmatched by any other MacDonald title for fourteen years, when that figure was tied by Mary Marston. There are no figures to compare Annals with his prior titles. But judging by how much he was paid for its sequels, Annals surely made both Strahan and Hurst and Blackett a great deal of money. Annals went through nearly a dozen editions in MacDonald’s lifetime.

      With the entry of American publishers into MacDonald’s world (Harper would be followed by Routledge, Scribner, Lothrop, Munro, Lippincott, McKay, Burt, Dodd Mead, Appleton, and others) the precedent was established with which MacDonald would struggle for most of his career, as did many British authors in the era before international copyright laws—foreign publishers pirating books and publishing them without compensation to the author or copyright-holding British publisher. (At that time, no royalties were paid on sales. Authors simply sold the copyright to a primary publisher for a one-time fee.) This aspect of MacDonald’s literary life will be touched on in the footnotes, and examined in more detail in the introductions to Mary Marston and Castle Warlock.

      But not all American editions were pirated. Just as there was cooperation between British publishers (as in this case between Strahan and Hurst and Blackett), so too in some cases did cooperation exist in the spirit of hands across the sea with U.S. publishers. Almost the very moment MacDonald’s books began to be pirated in America, so too did various cooperative arrangements begin that would eventually bring MacDonald into the mainstream of American publishing. Furthermore, his increasing popularity in the United States caused a number of leading American literary figures and publishers to take notice of the outspoken spiritual Scotsman. Seeds were planted that would result in many U.S. editions of his books in the following years, probably as many legitimately published with MacDonald’s cooperation as were pirated.

      A major development occurred with the publication of the sequel to Annals. It is with this title that the publishing giant George Routledge entered the picture. The Seaboard Parish was Routledge’s first publication of a MacDonald title. What took place over the next few years proved unique in all MacDonald’s career, two publishers appearing together on the title page—a co-publishing agreement between Alexander Strahan (U.K). and George Routledge and Sons (U.S). for the two books.

      Though we know few details, this co-publishing arrangement may have had an eye on the yet untapped American market, with Strahan to market the books in Britain, and Routledge in the U.S. Behind the scenes we again see Alexander Strahan the visionary, pushing the envelope, trying new things, experimenting, always with an eye to new markets and the expansion of his publishing empire.

      Until the serialization of Annals in his Sunday Magazine, Strahan had never published MacDonald before. Two years later he could boast four titles. He had

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1