Author: Grace MacDonald / Year: 1918-1999 / Genre:6-9yrs George MacDonald was a playwright, poet and Christian minister. He deeply influenced many people and was mentor to children's writer, Lewis Carroll, whom he encouraged to publish Alice after it was first written. He also had a great impact on other writers like Mark Twain, Tolkein and Walter de la Mare. His circle of friends included Ruskin, Tennyson, Trollope, Dickens and Wilkie Collins. In America he was admired by Walt Whitman and Longfellow. Though his works concern fantasy themes, he didn't intend them to be read only by children. He said, “I write not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be five or fifty or seventy-five.”
He was deeply humanist in thinking and his theology was of a compassionate and optimistic variety. He used fantasy more as a medium for exploring the real human condition and his works are tinged with wit and humor.
