AN EXPRESSION OF CHARACTER

A thorough compilation of letters that sheds new light on the Scottish writer and minister (1824-1905), a seminal figure in modern fantastic literature. Since his rediscovery in 1947 by C.S. Lewis, MacDonald's romances (especially Lilith and Phantastes) and fairy tales have been ranked as classics of world literature. But despite a slew of biographies, the Scot's inner life has remained somewhat veiled, a problem that this outstanding collection helps to redress. The letters—directed for the most part to MacDonald's wife and children—disclose little about his literary tastes (although he does confess an aversion for Thackeray) and nothing about his writing methods. But they are aglow with what editor Sadler (English/Bloomsburg University) calls MacDonald's ``incurable optimism,'' a product of his deeply held Christian faith (the same theological outlook that made his books the prototypes for C.S. Lewis's Narnia septet). At age 21, MacDonald writes that ``God is now with me....I try to trace him in little things.'' Later, he tells his mother that ``I wish to be delivered from myself. I wish to be made holy.'' Letters to Lewis Carroll, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, and other notables underscore this spiritual drive, which is evident especially in the face of tragedy: Of his brother's death, MacDonald writes that ``what he was he is now—only expanded, enlarged, and glorified.'' He chats about travels to Boston and Algiers; lectures, homilies, poetry, and novels; the griefs of old age (``I have never known such a time. Friend after friend going'')- -each letter adding to the overall impression that, in MacDonald, English literature came as close as it ever has to producing a genuine saint. Yet another treasure, noble and uplifting, from Britain's Victorian trove.