Unsaying the Commonplace: George MacDonald and the Critique of Victorian Convention

Although he was a man rooted in and engaged with nineteenth-century British culture, George MacDonald was no friend of Victorian convention. As this volume demonstrates, he was part of a tradition of counter-cultural writers, teachers, theologians, and reformers (including S. T. Coleridge, F. D. Maurice, A. J. Scott, and Charles Kingsley)-figures who stood up to injustice, fought for social change, opposed oppressive religious doctrines, and used imaginative fiction to transform individuals. These ten essays by leading MacDonald scholars such as Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, Trevor Hart, Elisabeth Jay, Kerry Dearborn-and including Stephen Prickett’s final essay on MacDonald-explore how MacDonald participated in this counter-cultural tradition, critiquing commonplace biases and awakening individuals out of their moral and theological complacencies.