Phantastes - George MacDonald

This classic tale by master Scottish story teller George MacDonald Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women is a fantasy novel first published in London in 1858.

The story is about the main character Anodos, a young man who is pulled into a dreamlike world and there searches for his ideal of female beauty. Anodos has many adventures and temptations while in the other world, until he is finally ready to give up his ideals.

George MacDonald was the inspiration for authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master": "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence."