George MacDonald (1824-1905), Scottish children's author and novelist, was educated at Aberdeen University before training as a Congregational minister. Finding his own individualistic views unacceptable to his parish, he gradually turned to literature. He published over fifty volumes of fiction, verse, children's stories, and sermons but is remembered chiefly for his fairy stories, including The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and its sequel The Princess and Curdie (1873).