At the Back of the North Wind
1871
At the Back of the North Wind
1871
This is the book that essentially invented modern children's fantasy. Written in 1871 by George MacDonald, it became the template that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien would follow for decades. Diamond is a coachman's son who sleeps in a hayloft above the horses, and one stormy night, he meets the North Wind - a mysterious, beautiful woman who speaks with the voice of the wind itself. She takes him on journeys through the night, to "the back of the North Wind" - a realm of impossible beauty and quiet sorrow. These aren't simple adventures. Diamond encounters children who are ill, animals who are suffering, the grief of the natural world. The book has real darkness in it, and real sadness. But it also has wonder - the kind that stays with you. It's a book about loss and comfort, about seeing the world as it is and finding it still beautiful. If you love Narnia or The Hobbit, you're reading grandchildren of this book.
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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-5e872129-0428-43d7-a488-93e982ca89b7.MacDonald, G. (1871). At the Back of the North Wind. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-5e872129-0428-43d7-a488-93e982ca89b7MacDonald, George. At the Back of the North Wind. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-5e872129-0428-43d7-a488-93e982ca89b7.
