C. S. Lewis famously writes about MacDonald that “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded George MacDonald as my master; indeed, I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.” So I figured if I was to have a more than passing acquaintance with Lewis and his friends that I should probably read something of MacDonald.

In the introduction to this edition, which incorporates an abbreviated version of an introduction that Lewis wrote for an anthology of MacDonald’s work in 1946, Lewis acknowledges his enormous debt to MacDonald, despite the fact that the two men had never met, and Lewis himself had only ever met one person who knew him. He writes “What [reading] it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptise [...] my imagination. It did nothing to the intellect nor (at that time) my conscience. [...] But when the process was complete [...] I found that I was still with MacDonald and that he had accompanied me all the way…”. This is high praise from someone whose conversion to Christianity resulted in what some argue are the most important set of Christian apologetics in the twentieth century.

“Lilith” is a Victorian fantasy somewhat in the mode and style of Poe (indeed Auden is quoted as comparing MacDonald to the “best of Poe”) — the narrator (the didacticly-named Mr. Vane) comes to inherit an estate featuring a large house with many books. After some time there he encounters a strange bird-like man named Mister Raven, who takes him through a looking glass in the attic of his house to a strange land where he takes part in a cosmic drama of sin and redemption.

The novel is mostly successful. The style at times is a little florid and a little overwrought (Lewis himself says in his introduction “If we defined Literature as an art whose medium is words, then certainly MacDonald has no place in its first rank, or even its second.” But despite this, MacDonald’s gift for description and myth-making redeem his writing, and you can see how profoundly MacDonald’s approach to engaging fundamental human issues through mythic means could have impacted Lews so strongly. And in thinking about Lewis’ fantastic writings, one can see how MacDonald’s ideas and devices are incorporated into them.

I haven’t experienced a fundamental change in consciousness by reading this novel as Lewis did, but it did help me understand the context into which Lewis and others were bringing their work, and its those works I think that have impacted me in the same way.