At the Back of the North Wind
Diamond, a coachman's son sleeping in a humble hayloft, encounters something impossible: the North Wind herself, beautiful and terrifying, ancient and playful. She takes him on nocturnal flights through a world transformed, where rivers have secret sorrows and flowers dream in color. These aren't ordinary adventures - they're glimpses into the spiritual reality hidden just beneath the surface of everyday life. Diamond must learn to see with more than his eyes, to face danger with courage, and to understand that true kindness sometimes requires leaving comfort behind. First published in 1871, this is the book that launched a genre. It directly inspired C.S. Lewis, who called MacDonald his literary father, and influenced J.R.R. Tolkien and generations of fantasy writers who followed. Yet the book endures not because of its influence but because it captures something essential about childhood: the certainty that the world is far stranger and more beautiful than adults remember. There are moments of real danger here, genuine sadness, but also an assurance that wonder waits at the back of every night.
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“Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.””
— George MacDonald
“Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.””
— George MacDonald
“For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.””
— George MacDonald
“...though I cannot promise to take you home," said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, "I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.””
— George MacDonald
“I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.''No it wouldn't,' returned Diamond stoutly. 'For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.''But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries. . . . It wouldn't be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest.””
— George MacDonald
“Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all cries.””
— George MacDonald
“How kind you are, North Wind!''I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.””
— George MacDonald
“It's not good at all”
— George MacDonald
“And when heart and head go together, nothing can stand before them””
— George MacDonald
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MacDonald, George. At the Back of the North Wind. Lex, lex-books.com/book/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-3910cb7d-d511-4a05-a351-6181b924d27a.MacDonald, G. (n.d.). At the Back of the North Wind. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-3910cb7d-d511-4a05-a351-6181b924d27aMacDonald, George. At the Back of the North Wind. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-3910cb7d-d511-4a05-a351-6181b924d27a.
