Ballantine, $0.95, ISBN 0-345-01711-0
Fantasy, 1969 (Reissue)
Before JRR Tolkien was mapping out Middle-earth and before CS Lewis was lecturing lions in Narnia, there was George MacDonald: Scottish minister, novelist, theologian, and part-time dealer in Victorian fever dreams.
Mr MacDonald was not only an accomplished writer in his own right, but he also happened to mentor a certain Lewis Carroll — yes, that one — and personally encouraged Mr Carroll to publish his little nonsense book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So really, when you’re tripping out on caterpillars and talking playing cards, you partly have George to thank.
Now, George MacDonald himself had a fair bit of success in his day, but his most complex and frankly weirdest book, Lilith, never quite cracked the mainstream. It didn’t reach the heights of The Princess and the Goblin, and it’s certainly not a household name like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Most modern readers stumble onto it either by accident while spelunking through Victorian fantasy archives, on the advice of a fantasy historian who owns a leather-bound ER Eddison collection and refers to The Worm Ouroboros as “light reading”, or while chasing down the influences of CS Lewis, who could not stop fangirling over Mr MacDonald if his life depended on it.
Yet, despite its obscurity, Lilith has managed to carve out a small but devoted cult following among readers with a taste for Christian mysticism, death symbolism, and fairy tales that feel like they were written by a benevolent but slightly unhinged ghost.
So, what’s this bizarre thing about, anyway?
Well, buckle up: it’s about a melancholy Victorian bookstore owner named Mr Vane (because of course his name is Vane), who discovers a portal to another realm through a mirror in his study. There, he embarks on a deeply biblical, dark-fantasy adventure featuring immortal children, people sleeping in purgatorial beds waiting for the end of days, a demonic queen, talking animal guides, and — naturally — an intense, arguably uncomfortable, fixation on a child named Lona.
To be fair, old George here probably intended Mr Vane’s feelings for Lona to be a metaphor for lost innocence, spiritual rebirth, and purity guiding a jaded adult soul back to grace. Most modern readers, however, can’t help but read it and think, “Dude… this is creepy. Maybe take a cold shower and rethink your life.”
What makes Lilith genuinely fascinating isn’t just the gothic weirdness or the beautifully lyrical prose, though both are worth the price of admission.
It’s Mr MacDonald’s surprisingly radical theology buried in the dreamscape. While most of his contemporaries — and let’s be honest, a fair number of modern preachers — were gleefully promising eternal damnation for anyone who looked sideways at a Sabbath, he imagined a relentlessly loving, relentlessly forgiving God.
His God doesn’t chuck sinners into eternal torment like a Victorian mother tossing misbehaving children into the coal shed. Instead, He burns away sin through painful but loving correction, redeeming even the most defiant soul. Not because He’s soft, but because love by its very nature doesn’t quit.
Even Lilith herself, queen of pride and malevolence, isn’t damned. She’s redeemed. George MacDonald’s God is like the cosmic equivalent of your grandma, refusing to give up on you no matter how many times you embarrass yourself at Christmas.
Hence, this book speaks best to adults who’ve done a little living, a little questioning, and a fair amount of unlearning of their childhood Sunday school lectures. It’s less about institutional religion and more about what it means to be human: clinging to illusions, fearing surrender, craving something bigger but being terrified of its demands.
Plus, the prose is chef’s kiss. The cadence, the tone, the atmosphere — it’s like someone wove a poem out of mist and moonlight. Sure, it’s dense in that classic 19th-century way, but it’s beautifully dense. Reading it is like sipping very old wine you’re not entirely sure you like, but it makes you feel elegantly haunted anyway.
These days, Lilith is one of those glorious oddities languishing in semi-obscurity on Project Gutenberg, waiting for a brave soul to crack open its pages and go, “What the actual hell did I just read?” It’s Narnia’s older, darker, melancholier sibling. It’s Wonderland if Wonderland was obsessed with death, purgatory, and universal redemption.
And honestly? You’ll probably walk away from it feeling a little better about mortality. A little more hopeful that maybe — just maybe — the abyss stares back because it loves you.
