George MacDonald was a Scottish writer, poet, and Christian Congregational clergyman. He established himself as a pioneering figure in modern fantasy writing and mentored fellow writer Lewis Carroll. In addition to his fairy stories, MacDonald wrote various works on Christian theology, including sermon collections. George MacDonald was born on December 10, 1824, in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to manufacturers George MacDonald and Helen McCay or MacKay. His father, a farmer, descended from the Clan MacDonald of Glen Coe and was a direct descendant of one of the families killed in the 1692 massacre. MacDonald was raised in an exceptionally literary household: one of his maternal uncles, Mackintosh MacKay, was a renowned Celtic scholar, editor of the Gaelic Highland Dictionary, and collector of fairy stories and Celtic oral poetry. His paternal grandfather had helped to publish an edition of James Macpherson's Ossian, a contentious epic poem based on the Fenian Cycle of Celtic Mythology that contributed to the birth of European Romanticism. MacDonald's step-uncle was a Shakespeare scholar, while his paternal cousin was also a Celtic intellectual. Both of his parents were avid readers, with his father admiring Isaac Newton, Robert Burns, William Cowper, Chalmers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Charles Darwin, to name a few, and his mother receiving a classical education that encompassed several languages.
