George MacDonald’s Victorian fairy tales transformed the genre of fantasy. His work also shaped the next generation of children’s literature: C.S. Lewis regarded MacDonald as a major influence, and writers as diverse as G.K. Chesterton and W.H. Auden acknowledged his significance. His best known story for children, The Princess and the Goblin, tells the story of a lonely child princess and her friend, a brave miner boy, in their battle with subterranean monsters. But MacDonald engages readers with more than the plot: enigmatic narrative asides and simple, but strikingly poetic language show why his work was an inspiration for modernist writers as well as those in fantasy and children’s literature.