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    Thomas Wingfold Curate
    Thomas Wingfold Curate
    Thomas Wingfold Curate
    Ebook447 pages

    Thomas Wingfold Curate

    By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

    4.5/5

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    A triumphant quest for the truth. First in the Wingfold Trilogy from the 19th-century Scottish author of Paul Faber Surgeon and There and Back.

    The character of Thomas Wingfold is introduced in this preeminent of George MacDonald’s English novels, a young curate suddenly brought face-to-face with the hypocrisy of having sought the pulpit as a profession rather than a spiritual calling. Wingfold’s prayerful journey into faith highlights MacDonald’s most powerful “theological novel.” We also meet the dwarf Joseph Polwarth, Wingfold’s spiritual mentor and one of MacDonald’s most memorable humble apologists for truth. The depth and poignancy of Wingfold’s quest makes this 1876 publication one of MacDonald’s best-loved works. MacDonald biographer and editor Michael Phillips ranks Thomas Wingfold Curate near the apex of MacDonald’s corpus, among his personal favorites along with Malcolm, Sir Gibbie, and Donal Grant.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 26, 2018
    ISBN9780795352119
    Author

    George MacDonald

    George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a popular Scottish lecturer and writer of novels, poetry, and fairy tales. Born in Aberdeenshire, he was briefly a clergyman, then a professor of English literature at Bedford and King's College in London. W. H. Auden called him "one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century."

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    • 5/5
      A deep and insightful read. Once I began reading, I walked with the characters through their journey of faith, returning back to the Word of God.

    Book preview

    Thomas Wingfold Curate - George MacDonald

    Thomas Wingfold

    Curate

    George MacDonald

    Introductory material © 2018 by Michael Phillips

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

    Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

    ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5211-9

    www.RosettaBooks.com

    The Cullen Collection of the

    Fiction of George MacDonald

    1. Phantastes (1858)

    2. David Elginbrod (1863)

    3. The Portent (1864)

    4. Adela Cathcart (1864)

    5. Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

    6. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

    7. Robert Falconer (1868)

    8. Guild Court (1868)

    9. The Seaboard Parish (1868)

    10. At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

    11. Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

    12. The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

    13. Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

    14. The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

    15. Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

    16. Malcolm (1875)

    17. The Wise Woman (1875)

    18. St. George and St. Michael (1876)

    19. Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

    20. The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

    21. Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

    22. Sir Gibbie (1879)

    23. Mary Marston (1881)

    24. Castle Warlock (1881)

    25. The Princess and Curdie (1882)

    26. Weighed and Wanting (1882)

    27. Donal Grant (1883)

    28. What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

    29. Home Again (1887)

    30. The Elect Lady (1888)

    31. A Rough Shaking (1890)

    32. There and Back (1891)

    33. The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

    34. Heather and Snow (1893)

    35. Lilith (1895)

    36. Salted With Fire (1897)

    37. Far Above Rubies (1898)

    The introductions to the 37 volumes form a continuous picture of George MacDonald’s literary life, viewed through the prism of the development of his written legacy of works. While each book can of course be read on its own, every introduction picks up where that to the previous volume left off, with special attention to the title under consideration. The introductions together, as a biography of MacDonald’s life as a writer, are compiled in Volume 38.

    38. George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

    The Cullen Collection

    of the Fiction of George MacDonald

    New editions of George MacDonald’s classic fiction works updated and introduced by Michael Phillips

    CONTENTS

    Foreword to The Cullen Collection

    Introduction to Thomas Wingfold Curate

    NOTE: As the introductions to the 37 volumes of The Cullen Collection form a continuous portrait of George MacDonald’s life, and as many of the introductions contain comprehensive and detailed discussion and analysis of the title in question—its plot, themes, and circumstances of writing—some first-time readers may choose to skip ahead to the story itself, saving the introduction for later, so as not to spoil the story.

    1.     Helen Lingard

    2.     Thomas Wingfold

    3.     The Diners

    4.     A Staggering Question

    5.     The Curate in the Churchyard

    6.     The Cousins

    7.     In the Garden

    8.     The Dwarfs

    9.     The Discomfort of Waking

    10.   Agonizing Journey of Doubt

    11.   A Disturbing Letter

    12.   The Park Gate

    13.   Humble Confession

    14.   Joseph Polwarth

    15.   A Strange Sermon

    16.   A Thunderbolt

    17.   The Refuge

    18.   Helen’s Terrible Secret

    19.   Leopold’s Story

    20   Sisterhood

    21.   Know the Man

    22.   Something to Say at Last

    23.   The Ride

    24.   A Dream

    25.   Another Sermon

    26.   The Linen-Draper

    27.   Rachel and Mr. Drew

    28.   The Sheath

    29.   A Sermon to Helen

    30.   Reactions

    31.   A Glimmer

    32.   A Meeting

    33.   A Haunted Soul

    34.   Compelled Confidence

    35.   Willing Confidence

    36.   Sleep

    37.   Divine Service

    38.   The Shop in Heaven

    39.   Polwarth and Lingard

    40.   George and Leopold

    41.   Wingfold and Helen

    42.   All Sinners Together

    43.   Bascombe’s Report

    44.   Confession

    45.   The Mask

    46.   The Curate and the Doctor

    47.   Helen and the Curate

    48.   The Threesome

    49.   Struggles

    50.   The Lawn

    51.   Deliverance

    52.   The Meadow

    53.   Rachel and Leopold

    54.   The Bloodhound

    55.   The Bedside

    56.   No Comfort

    57.   The Departure

    58.   The Sunset

    59.   An Honest Spy

    60.   What Helen Heard

    61.   The Curate’s Resolve

    62.   Helen Awake

    63.   The Abbey

    "Papa seems so quietly happy."

    —Louisa MacDonald, May 4, 1872, from Deskford (near Cullen)

    "Papa does enjoy this place so much."

    —Louisa MacDonald, May 6, 1872 from the Seafield Arms Hotel, Cullen

    "Papa oh! so jolly & bright & happy…Papa was taken for Lord Seafield yesterday."

    —Louisa MacDonald, Sept. 2, 1873, from Cullen

    "Papa is very poorly. He ought to go to Cullen for a week I think."

    —Louisa MacDonald, October 5, 1873, from London

    FOREWORD

    The Cullen Collection

    of the Fiction of George MacDonald

    The series name for these works of Scotsman George MacDonald (1824-1905) has its origins in the 1830s when the boy MacDonald formed what would be a lifelong affection for the northeast Scottish village of Cullen.

    The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, writing from Portsoy or Cullen, he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, as soon as possible. The broad white beach of Cullen Bay, the Seatown, the grounds of Cullen House, the temple of Psyche (Temple of the Winds,) Cullen Burn, the dwellings along Grant Street, Scarnose, and especially Findlater Castle, all seized the youth’s imagination with a love that never left him. MacDonald continued to visit Huntly and Cullen throughout his life, using his childhood love for his homeland as the backdrop for his richest novels, including what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm, published in 1875.

    We therefore honor MacDonald’s unique relationship to Cullen with these newly updated editions of his novels. In Cullen, in certain respects more than in any other place, one finds the transcendent spirit of George MacDonald’s life and the ongoing legacy of his work still magically alive after a century and a half. This release of The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald coincides with a memorial bench and plaque established on Cullen’s Castle Hill commemorating MacDonald’s visits to the region.

    To those readers familiar with my previous editions of MacDonald’s novels, I should make clear that eighteen of the volumes in this new series (including this one) are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown in the publishing world, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort.

    Added to that was the challenge of working with editors who occasionally changed MacDonald’s wording and removed more than I intended, then also sometimes took liberties to the opposite extreme by inserting words, sentences, even whole paragraphs that originated from neither myself nor MacDonald. Those editions were also subject to sanitizing editorial scrutiny, which occasionally removed aspects of MacDonald’s more controversial perspectives, and added evangelically correct words and phrases to bring the text more in line with accepted orthodoxy. As MacDonald himself knew, there are times an author has little say in details of final text, design, art, or overall quality. Thus, the covers and titles were not mine. And I was often kept in the dark about internal textual changes and was unable to correct them. Yet, too, many of MacDonald’s expansive perspectives were preserved (though what was excised and what was left often seemed random and inconsistent) for which I applaud Bethany’s openness. Their publications of the 1980s helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald and we owe them our gratitude. Frustrating as the process occasionally was, I thus remain enormously grateful for those editions. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

    Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions, though identical at many points, have been expanded—sometimes significantly. In that sense they reflect MacDonald’s originals somewhat more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors. Needless to say, the doctrinal scrubbings have been corrected and the deleted passages reinstated. Nineteen additional titles have been added. The thirteen realistic novels among these have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six, which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six titles—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them for The Cullen Collection with the same texts by which they are generally known.*

    Dedicated followers of all great men and women continually seek hints that reveal their inner being—the true man, the true woman. What were they really like? What made him or her tick? Many biographies and studies attempt to answer such questions. In George MacDonald’s case, however, a panorama of windows exists that reveals far more about his person than the sum-total of everything that has been written about him over the years. Those are the novels that encompass his life’s work. The volumes of this series represent the true spiritual biography of the man, a far more important biography than life’s details can ever tell.

    In 1911, six years after his father’s death, George MacDonald’s son Ronald wrote of the man with whom he had spent his life:

    "The ideals of his didactic novels were the motive of his own life…a life of literal, and, which is more, imaginative consistency with his doctrine…There has probably never been a writer whose work was a better expression of his personal character. This I am not engaged to prove; but I very positively assert…that in his novels…and allegories…one encounters...the same rich imagination, the same generous lover of God and man, the same consistent practiser of his own preaching, the same tender charity to the sinner with the same uncompromising hostility to the sin, which were known in daily use and by his own people counted upon more surely than sunshine." *

    Thirty years after the publication of my one-volume biography George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, it now gives me great pleasure to present this thirty-seven-volume biography of the man, the Scotsman, the prophetic spiritual voice who is George MacDonald.†

    How fitting is the original title in which Ronald MacDonald’s sketch of his father quoted above first appeared, From A Northern Window. For any attempted portrait of the man George MacDonald becomes at once a window into his homeland as well.

    Therefore, I invite you to gaze back in time through the northern windows of these volumes. Picture yourself perhaps near the cheerful hearth described in the opening pages of What’s Mine’s Mine, looking out the window to the cold seas and mountains in the distance, where perhaps you get a fleeting glimpse of highlanders Ian and Alister Macruadh.

    Or imagine yourself walking up Duke Street in Huntly from MacDonald’s birth home, following in the footsteps of fictional Robert Falconer to the town square.

    Or envision yourself on some windswept highland moor with Gibbie or Cosmo Warlock.

    Or walk up the circular staircase of Fyvie Castle to Donal Grant’s tiny tower hideaway where he began to unravel the mysteries of that ancient and spooky place.

    Or walk up from Cullen’s Seatown in your mind’s eye alongside Malcolm selling the fish in his creel, turning at the Market Cross into Grant Street and continuing past Miss Horn’s house and up the hill to the entrance of the Cullen House grounds.

    Or perhaps climb Castle Hill to the George MacDonald memorial bench and gaze across the sweep of Cullen Bay as Malcolm’s story comes to life before your eyes.

    From any of these settings, whether real or imaginary, drift back through the years and gaze through the panoramic windows of these stories, and take in with pleasure the drama, relationships, images, characters, settings, and spiritual truths George MacDonald offers us as we are drawn into his world.

    Michael Phillips

    Cullen, Morayshire

    Scotland, 2017

    INTRODUCTION

    A Triumphant Quest For Truth

    The eleven years between 1875 and 1886 witnessed the publication of twenty books from George MacDonald’s prolific pen, including some of the Scotsman’s richest work.

    Early in that rush of enterprise and productivity, the year 1876 was especially fruitful with the release of four titles—two volumes of poetry and two new novels. The last of these had been serialized through the year in the Strahan/King collaborative magazine Day of Rest, and was published in book form in December. It was his superb portrayal of young clergyman Thomas Wingfold. *

    Thomas Wingfold Curate is surely MacDonald’s most spiritually powerful English novel and must rank as among his most incisive works.

    Wingfold’s central theme—both the book bearing his name and the theme of the man’s life—is belief. But not as we might expect. MacDonald confronts the foundations of belief, not based on an assault from the outside by secularism, atheism, or evil in the world, but from within the church.

    What do those calling themselves Christians really believe? However, MacDonald’s probing pen goes even further: What do clergymen really believe? Or do they believe at all?

    As young Thomas Wingfold faces his own shallowness and hypocrisy, he ultimately confronts the profoundly personal question: In spite of his clerical position, does he really believe in the Christianity he professes to preach?

    Thus begins a spiritual quest for truth, which becomes Everyman’s Quest. Thomas Wingfold’s is a universal story, which no doubt explains the enduring power of this book.

    How should we first believe, and how should we then live, become the foundational questions of Thomas Wingfold’s spiritual pilgrimage. As we recall George MacDonald’s personal season of doubt during his university years, explored in the introduction to Phantastes, we must believe that in Thomas Wingfold’s quest we hear echoes of MacDonald’s own struggle with belief and whether or not he was being called to the ministry.

    George MacDonald was not a writer of what we would call series fiction. He did, however, write two trilogies. The first of those, the Harry Walton, or Marshmallows Trilogy, came early in his career, Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, the first of that series, being his third major realistic novel. His second, the Wingfold Trilogy, began at the exact midpoint of his active writing life in the late 1870s.

    It is fascinating that both these trilogies—accounting for approximately a fourth of MacDonald’s entire fictional output—feature clergymen as his main characters. Though the hypocritical, doctrinaire, and self-seeking professional clergy incurred some of his most blistering critique—in both fiction and sermons—it is clear that MacDonald loved and honored the pastoral role. His was a pastor’s heart. He railed against hypocrisy in the clergy for the same reason that Jesus attacked the hypocrisy of the Pharisees—because he loved the House of God and the divine priesthood too much to see the cancer of hypocrisy in its ranks.

    Though he never occupied another full-time pulpit after his brief sojourn at Arundel in the early 1850s, we must believe that George MacDonald’s heart swelled with humble pride and a keen sense of fulfillment every time he mounted the pulpit as a guest to speak to God’s gathered flock. In Thomas Wingfold we have another example—following Robert Falconer and Malcolm—of the epitome of MacDonald’s spiritual man. That role model he placed in a fictional pulpit as an example and mentor to the thousands of good, honest, humble, serving ministers, pastors, and priests whose heart’s desire, as true shepherds of the Good Shepherd, is to build truth into the lives of their congregations.

    As always MacDonald places characters in relationship with each other who respond to the circumstances and events of the story differently. In this case, how will the two polar opposite characters, Wingfold and Bascombe, respond to the quest for truth? In MacDonald’s books, the four types of human soil are always evident. We see a varying array of men and women facing the same truths. Some choose to make Truth life-changing. Others choose to continue along the will-less track of character, never asking if they might become more than they are, never asking if they should become more than they are, never asking if there is a God to whom they owe their obedience.

    George MacDonald was not an author who in our generation would be critically acclaimed by the secular press or the Pulitzer committee. This is no reflection on his writing but simply on his priorities as an author.

    In speaking of Malcolm, though his words apply equally to Thomas Wingfold’s story, Rolland Hein perceptively differentiates between the world’s view of art—where any intended message must be indirect, subliminal, and never addressed directly by an artist, whether author or painter—and George MacDonald’s very different view. MacDonald’s art was played out on the canvas of the human soul. The culmination of that art was a soul properly related in humility and obedience to his Father-Creator. It is hardly any wonder that his work has never been critically acclaimed by the literary intelligentsia.

    Hein writes:

    MacDonald…was…quite aware of the increasing cry in his day—one that was soon to pervade the Modern literary period—that art should accomplish its ends entirely by indirection, the artist making his art reveal life by means of form and image alone and not by offering any direct statements of intention…But in MacDonald’s universe the ultimate work of art was a human life of moral and spiritual beauty; he considered valid only those artistic qualities in his novels that would help his readers achieve such lives. He wanted his literary art, therefore, to be a means to this end. ¹

    Everything George MacDonald desired to accomplish through his books thus runs counter to the values of secular society. His message was a spiritual one. It is only in that context that MacDonald can be understood and his work fully appreciated. In each of his books, different facets of his vision of God’s character emerge. Through no single title are we given the complete scope of the grand tapestry being woven by the legacy of MacDonald’s corpus. Each title contributes its appointed share, with new threads, new subtleties of color, familiar themes seen from fresh angles. And here, Thomas Wingfold Curate adds forceful and radiant imagery to the portrayal of a life lived with God.

    Christianity in England and Scotland during the late nineteenth century, despite pockets of revival and doctrinal awakening, was mostly bound by the constricting theology of Calvinism. This was especially the case in Scotland. Even the Church of England was yet influenced in a myriad of unseen ways by a generally Calvinistic outlook of the world, heaven and hell, and most importantly God’s character.

    Into the midst of this legalism, MacDonald emerged with a warm view of a God of love and compassion. From the pulpit and the printed page, MacDonald proclaimed that God’s essence was love. It was not, according to the outspoken Scotsman, God’s will that any should perish, that anyone should be so far removed from him that he could not reach down and pour his love into him. MacDonald’s writings portrayed an entirely contrasting picture of God—a tender and compassionate Father. Much of today’s awareness of God’s loving Fatherhood has sprung from evangelical pioneers like MacDonald—men who dared stand against the tide of the common, unimaginative (and MacDonald would say unscriptural) theology of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

    When we meet him, Thomas Wingfold is a shallow man with no personal faith, a man who plagiarized his sermons, a man with little personality, unequipped to occupy the pulpit and still less to lead even the humblest of his parishioners. And yet he quickly endears himself to us, and we immediately sense MacDonald’s love for him as well. For Wingfold possessed one quality MacDonald revered above nearly all others—openness. His ears were not plugged with self-satisfaction, tradition, or doctrine. He was ready to listen, willing to hear truth from wherever it came.

    With this openness came a willing and honest heart. In Wingfold we see so many qualities that accompany openness—humility, willingness to admit oneself ignorant, lack of presumption, absence of defenses, no predisposition to argue or justify or defend or show another wrong. His focus was entirely on the mirror that probed his own heart, and then his eagerness to root out whatever stood in the way of truth.

    Intrinsic to the open mind and heart, MacDonald clarifies the vital and necessary role of doubt. The open mind, he insists, has the courage to voice uncertainties and to seek logical and reasonable and scriptural answers. In Thomas Wingfold Curate we encounter the most basic of questions: Is Christianity true? Does it make sense? Are its precepts to be believed? Or is it a hoax?

    In Thomas Wingfold we are presented with an unusual MacDonaldian hero—a man asleep, but, and most important, a man willing to come awake because at its root his dormant heart loves the truth. Therefore, when atheist Bascombe confronts him with the question, Tell me honestly, do you really believe a word of it? the curate’s complacency is shattered.

    But this is not the story of merely one waking, but of three. Alongside the story of the curate runs the parallel account of Helen, whose dreamy and unthinking world is suddenly rocked by a shocking catastrophe, after which she will never be the same. Like a splash of icy water in a sleepy face, her brother’s alarming troubles rouse Helen’s deeper nature. Wingfold and Helen, are joined in the quest toward wakefulness by fellow pilgrim Mr. Drew, all three guided by a vintage MacDonald saint, dwarf Joseph Polwarth.

    It may surprise some readers when I say that I observe certain parallels here with Lilith, which will not come from MacDonald’s pen until many years later. The depths of horror with one’s own sin, and the foundation of repentance experienced by Leopold, bear striking similarities to MacDonald’s exploration of the worm that dieth not in Lilith almost two decades later.

    As we work our way through the drama and the formidable questions raised about sin and man’s response, MacDonald’s point becomes clear—sin is sin, and God is sufficient to deliver man from all of it—from the tiniest to the most gruesome. No matter how small or how ugly the sin, God in his compassion seeks our deliverance, healing, and rebirth. But also our repentance and accountability.

    Thomas Wingfold, along with the characters in MacDonald’s other books, represents another facet of that ideal character, through all of whom he was painting a portrait of Christ—a portion of the Ideal Man here, another quality there. In Gibbie we see the eyes of love, in Robert Falconer the passion for truth, in Annie the radiance of humility, in Alec the prodigal’s search and return, in Malcolm the authority which comes from simplicity. And in all we witness the hands of service. Every character reveals a different stroke of the brush, which taken together illumine MacDonald’s lifetime masterpiece: the portrait of the Christ he loved and served.

    Whether the incident served as inspiration for the book, or whether MacDonald simply incorporated elements of it along the way, a high profile murder actually occurred in England about the same time this book was written that bore remarkable similarities to Leopold’s story. ² This is but one more example of MacDonald’s use of everything that crossed his path—public events, ideas, people he knew, family situations, social issues, etc.—as grist for his novelist’s brain-mill.

    A fact Judy and I find puzzling is MacDonald’s frequent mention of pain in Wingfold’s past. Yet we are never told anything about it. It’s almost as if MacDonald was dropping hints of themes he intended to explore, but then never did. These hints, too, are somewhat at variance with Wingfold’s sleepy character. MacDonald usually emphasizes that it takes pain to wake us up. But it didn’t seem to have worked in Wingfold’s case, and MacDonald never connect Wingfold’s mysterious past with the present of his awakening. Such factors as these no doubt explain why Wingfold has suffered somewhat at the hands of the critics as one of MacDonald’s less skillfully crafted works from the standpoint of pure fictional craft. It also helps clarify the value of what I do in my editing and updating of MacDonald’s novels. Pruning away some of the technical weaknesses found in the original (about which the critics are not altogether in error), allows the thematic radiance to emerge with more focus. This will be discussed further in the footnote, Controversy over Edited Editions.

    My 1985 Bethany House edition of Thomas Wingfold’s story, The Curate’s Awakening, was one of the most popular books of that series and elicited more response than any of the other titles. ³ However, Thomas Wingfold Curate was not at the top rank of MacDonald’s books published during his lifetime in Great Britain—perhaps because of the very flaws its critics pointed out. Though released in three volumes by Hurst and Blackett in 1876, the publisher never issued a one-volume edition at all. Not until MacDonald’s friend Alexander Strahan produced it in one volume four or five years later (one of Strahan’s last MacDonald titles in his own name) was a single volume edition available in the U.K. Nor did Wingfold appear among Kegan Paul’s one-volume set for a decade after its initial release. It was reprinted fewer times and published by fewer publishers than many of his lesser known novels.

    The case was different across the Atlantic, however. Thomas Wingfold was one of the first books pirated by the U.S. publisher George Munro, probably the most egregious of the publishing pirates, for his Seaside Library, which was launched a year after Wingfold’s release and became the most prolific publisher of cheap library editions. It seems likely that Wingfold’s message, as we found in the 1980s, personally resonated a century before with readers in America.

    Munro’s Seaside Library had begun a year prior to Harper’s Franklin Square Library in 1878. Once Munro discovered George MacDonald, he aggressively pirated nearly all his past novels, publishing seven titles in 1879, which included Wingfold, and another seven before 1881 was out. By then they had published most of MacDonald’s past work. From that point on, Munro snatched up every new MacDonald title the minute the first edition was off the press. On the title page of every one was listed a Copyright date, though Munro owned none of the copyrights. None of the authors or true copyright-holding publishers received a penny for the millions of library editions sold by Munro.

    Thomas Wingfold was also published in the same year of its U.K. release by George Routledge and Sons in the U.S., who, after their start with Strahan several years before, were now publishing nearly every new MacDonald title.

    Routledge presents a fascinating window into the publishing dynamics of George MacDonald’s writer’s life. Routledge was a U.K. publishing giant with a somewhat tenuous reputation in the publishing world as one of the most flagrant British pirates of U.S. books by America’s well-known authors. It might be said that Routledge was Munro’s equivalent in the U.K. As a result, it has been assumed that Routledge’s New York division also pirated MacDonald’s books in the U.S.

    It may be that a number of Routledge’s MacDonald editions were pirated. We don’t really know. However, the world of publishing, especially in those days, was something of an old boy’s club where everybody knew everybody, and where a surprising degree of cooperation and camaraderie existed between publishers. Alexander Strahan is probably the prime example, who, even when the fortunes of his own company were on the decline, was still respected in some circles, and continued to act on behalf of MacDonald in negotiations with other publishers.

    My longtime friend, and knowledgeable resource on MacDonald’s publication history, David Hiatt, notes:

    Even during his financially strained years, Strahan managed to hold on to a few copyrights and a few old friends. Even after he separated from his partners and was unable to offer the prices he had in the past, and though financially weak, he was still favored within the industry.

    Names like Macmillan, Daldy, Sampson Low, Isbister, Henry King, Blackie, and so many others, all swam in the same pond. George Routledge, too, was part of the club. Strahan’s partnership with Routledge had resulted in co-published editions of Seaboard and Annals years before. Even if Routledge was a known pirate of American literary properties, he was apparently not black-balled as a result. We have only to draw the parallel with the Harper brothers in the U.S., among the most respected names in the history of American publishing, who were also known pirates of British literary properties. ⁴ It is possible that piracy in a publishing world regulated by no binding copyright laws was simply accepted practice and was not the scourge it seems to us as we gaze back on the events of those years. Again, we don’t know.

    Yet times were changing. More and more attention was being given to copyrights. Harper, their pirating days long behind them, later became the first-edition American publisher of Heather and Snow. Perhaps a similar transition gradually took place with Routledge as they emerged out of the shadows (if there were shadows) of pirate-publishing to take their place as one of MacDonald’s primary and legitimate publishers.

    Routledge’s interest in MacDonald was broad-based. Most of MacDonald’s publishers had specific genres of interest, whether fantasy, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc. Routledge wanted it all. They released editions of Annals, Seaboard, Unspoken Sermons, The Miracles of Our Lord, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, and eventually most of the novels. And whether or not some of these early titles were indeed pirated, it seems that Routledge was gradually being drawn into the mainstream of MacDonald’s future.

    Signs of a direct relationship between Routledge and MacDonald, on a sound and legitimate footing is seen in 1876—a year which saw Routledge publish two MacDonald titles that bear evidence of having MacDonald’s consent. Printed on the back of the title page of Routledge’s edition of St. George and St. Michael, though the date of this release is uncertain, are the words, Author’s Edition. It is a phrase used (J.B. Lippincott for several later titles, and also in this case by J.B. Ford for its 1876 edition of St. George and St. Michael) to indicate publication with the author’s approval.

    That same year Routledge released an edition of Thomas Wingfold Curate. About its pending release, MacDonald wrote to his American friend R. W. Gilder, My book which Routledge is about to publish in America I count one of my most important. Whether it will be largely read I can hardly form a conjecture even. Some of it is necessarily a little difficult. It is just being finished off—six months work. ⁵

    MacDonald’s advance knowledge of the publication, and his obvious enthusiasm for its release, does not sound like a man decrying the piracy of a title for which he has such high hopes. ⁶

    Most interesting about this case, however, is the fact that MacDonald had apparently negotiated a deal with Routledge for an American publication before he had a U.K. publisher. He was still looking for a publisher in Britain—and doing so without Strahan or Watt or anyone else involved. The Strahan/King duo was publishing the serial of Wingfold in their magazine the Day of Rest, but seems to have had nothing to do with negotiations for the book. MacDonald was handling it on his own. And for reasons unknown, he did not try any of his former publishers, but instead tried to sell Wingfold to Macmillan, publishers of England’s Antiphon eight years earlier.

    This is a curious thing. Why not Hurst and Blackett, Henry King, or even Strahan? In approaching Macmillan, MacDonald sets out very definite terms, and references the deal already in place for the America publication.

    As an author who has written dozens of letters exactly like this—with the rejection letters to go with them!—I love seeing this practical and human side of the business of writing.

    MacDonald wrote:

    Corage, Boscombe, Bournemouth

    Feb.15, 1876

    Mess. Macmillan & Co.

    Gentlemen,

    I now have a book on hand, more than half-finished, for which I wish to find a publisher in the 3 vol. edition. It is appearing in Mess. Strahan & Co’s magazine The Day of Rest. If after I have stated to you my terms, you should be inclined to see it, I can send you about the half that is already in print.

    For the entire copyright—that is with the understanding that it is already arranged for in America—and only America, I want £500.

    For the right to print as many copies of the 3 vol. ed. As you please—then the copyright revert to me—£400.

    For the right to print 1000 copies £350, with 50 more if that number is exceeded.

    I should want half the price down on delivery of the half and the rest when the whole is handed over to you.

    I am, Gentlemen,

    Your obedient servant,

    George MacDonald. ⁷

    However, Macmillan declined. George MacDonald, too, even at the height of his career, received rejection letters!

    For unknown reasons, Henry King now bowed out after publishing but three MacDonald titles. (Or perhaps it was MacDonald himself who decided to bypass both King and Strahan.) Instead, once more MacDonald returned to his long-faithful friends at Hurst and Blackett, his first and still standby fiction publisher, for the U.K. triple decker of Thomas Wingfold after the book was in process with Routledge for U.S. rights. Apparently there were no hard feelings on Hurst and Blackett’s part in spite of being cut out of the loop on many previous occasions. ⁸

    The most interesting fact, however, is that these two letters (to R.W. Gilder and Macmillan) confirm beyond doubt that Routledge’s Wingfold edition couldn’t have been pirated—MacDonald had already arranged for the U.S. copyright before he even had a British publisher. Not only did MacDonald negotiate the arrangements with Routledge, there was not yet a U.K. edition in existence for Routledge to pirate had they wanted to.

    Routledge would continue to be a hugely important factor in the dissemination of MacDonald’s books in the U.S., especially as they began working with Daniel Lothrop’s Boston firm.

    Rolland Hein goes on to explain that MacDonald’s hopes for Wingfold did not materialize.

    "MacDonald’s misgivings about its reception were correct as far as the reviewers were concerned. The Athenaeum gave it only a paragraph, remarking it was largely given over to religious discourse and hence ‘more directly controversial’ than his previous novels. The Fortnightly Review gave it a lengthy summary, but only to illustrate the reviewer’s ‘pain and diffidence’ in reading it. He conjectured it would please only those ‘who like a sandwich of sermons and sensation.’ The British critical establishment had become increasingly disdainful

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