George MacDonald
An 365-day anthology of readings from one of the most influential writers of all time, George MacDonald, compiled by CS Lewis himself.
MacDonald was a major Christian writer of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. He influenced nearly everyone who was a major twentieth century writer (including Lewis Carroll, WH Auden, JRR Tolkien, Walter de la Mare, and CS Lewis. Not only was he a pioneer in the fantasy fiction genre, laying the path for people like Tolkien to write Lord of the Rings, but also a major Christian thinker, which influenced Lewis profoundly.
Lewis, in fact, wrote that MacDonald was his ‘master’, and said ‘I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.’
These words will challenge and uplift you, and illuminate the faith which underpins all of CS Lewis’s popular and enduring writing.
Born in Ireland in 1898, Clive Staples Lewis gained a triple First at Oxford and was Fellow and Tutor at Magdalen College from 1925-54, where he was a contemporary of Tolkien. In 1954 he became Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. C. S. Lewis was for many years an atheist, until his conversion, memorably described in his autobiography ‘Surprised by Joy’: “I gave in, and admitted that God was God … perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” He is celebrated for his famous series of children’s books, the Narnia Chronicles (which have been filmed and broadcast many times), as well as his literary criticism and science fiction. C. S. Lewis died on 22nd November 1963.