Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy

by Michael Partridge (Editor), Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson (Editor), Stephen Prickett (Preface)

Magdalen College, where C.S. Lewis taught in Oxford, was an appropriate site for the “Informing the Inklings” conference hosted by the George MacDonald Society. Participants explored how MacDonald and fellow literary figures such as S.T. Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley, and Andrew Lang paved the way for 20th century fantasists such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The twelve essays collected in this book examine this rich lineage of mythmakers. Contributors include Stephen Prickett, Malcolm Guite, Trevor
Hart, and Jean Webb as well as other Inklings experts. Like the authors they write about, these scholars believe imaginative fiction has
the power to enrich and even change our lives.

Genres: Fantasy, Essays

272 pages, Paperback

Published July 4, 2018

Reviews

[Mythlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly liked the essays by Trevor Hart (imagination and humanity in MacDonald), Bethany Bear Hebbard (MacDonald, Lewis & literary criticism), Sharin Schroeder (fairy stories and belief in Lang and Tolkien), and Monika Hilder (looking at some aspects of gender in Lewis and MacDonald).

Two or three of the essays really fell short of their promise, however, and in others I noted some irksome glitches, such as "poured over" for "pored over" and "trouver" for (I assume) either "trouveur" (which seems most appropriate to me) or "trouvère" (which seems to be the term MacDonald used).

[Robin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book; very good quality and not expensive!
So annoyed that the conference was at my old college and I didn't find out about it....

[Louisa Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend ‘Organised Innocence’ page 69