About this item
In this sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, Curdie has returned to his life as a miner and has dismissed the supernatural happenings of the past, believing them to have been a dream. When Curdie callously wounds a pigeon, his conscience leads him to Princess Irene's mystical great-great-grandmother for help. She has him plunge his hands into a pile of rose petals that burns like fire. Extraordinarily, this grants him the power to see what kind of "animal" a person is at heart. She then sends him on a quest, accompanied by a peculiar doglike creature named Lina, who was once a human. However, Curdie must resolve his own skepticism before he can use the powers granted him to defeat the evil that is threatening the future of the kingdom.
About the Author
George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. He was educated at Aberdeen University and after a short and stormy career as a minister at Arundel, where his unorthodox views led to his dismissal, he turned to fiction as a means of earning a living. He wrote over 50 books. Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, MacDonald inspired many authors, such as , and . Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master": "Picking up a copy of 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 as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence. "Elizabeth Yates wrote of Sir Gibbie, "It moved me the way books did when, as a child, the great gates of literature began to open and first encounters with noble thoughts and utterances were unspeakably thrilling. "Even , who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald. For more information, please see
