Macdonald, GEORGE

Macdonald, GEORGE, a Scottish poet and novelist, born at Huntly, Aberdeenshire, in 1824, educated at Aberdeen University and the theological college of the Congregationalists at Highbury. He became minister at Arundel in Sussex, and afterwards at Manchester, but was compelled by the state of his health to give up preaching. A short residence in Algiers restored him to comparative vigour, and, returning to London, he took to literature as a profession. His first book, Within and Without, a poem, appeared in 1856, and was followed by Poems (1857), and Phantastes, a Faerie Romance (1858), a poem as irregular as Kilmeny, and almost as full of beauty and power. A long series of novels followed, including David Elginbrod (1862); The Portent (1864); Alce Forbes of Howglen (1865); Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1866); Guild Court (1867); The Seaboard Parish (1868); Robert Falconer (1868); Wilfrid Chmbermede (1871); Malcolm (1874); St George and St Michael (1875); Thomas Wingfold, Curate (1876); The Marquis of Lossie (1877); Sir Gibbie (1879); What's Mine's Mine (1886); Lilith (1895); and Salted with Fire (1897). Almost all these novels contain passages of singular beauty, and are lightened up by fine fancy and descriptive power, but they are badly constructed and defective in harmony as works of art. They reveal the deep spiritual instincts of their author in his reaction against Calvinism, as well as the nebulousity of his mental atmosphere and his inability for sustained thought. The dialect is that of Aberdeen and the north-eastern counties, and sounds feeble to the ear after the classic vigour of the language of Burns and Scott. He has also published books for the young: Dealings with the Fairies (1867), Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood (1869), At the Back of the North Wind (1870), and The Princess and the Goblin (1871); besides religious works: Unspoken Sermons (3 series, 1866–89), and The Miracles of Our Lord (1870). Macdonald is well known as a lecturer, and in 1872–73 he made a lecturing tour in the United States. In 1877 he received a Civil List pension of £100.