The Princess and the Goblin (2018)

In a certain rather special sense I for one can really testify to a book that has made a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start; a vision of things which even so real a revolution as a change of religious allegiance has substantially only crowned and confirmed. Of all the stories I have read, including even all the novels of the same novelist, it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life. It is called The Princess and the Goblin, and is by George MacDonald.

– G.K. Chesterton, 1924

In 2018, Nissemand Press (the children’s book imprint of St. Irenaeus Press) released a new edition of George MacDonald’s beloved classic, The Princess and the Goblin:

What makes this edition special is the artwork: our editors sifted through six printings of The Princess and the Goblin from the golden age of illustration and extracted 60 pictures, almost one for every page spread.

The edition is also furnished with helpful sidenotes to help readers with difficult vocabulary. For instance, when you read, “Loosely hold the helve,” on page 26 and your child asks you, “What is a ‘helve’?” you may sagely answer (from the sidenote), “‘Helve’ is another word for handle.” “Wow! Grown-ups know everything.”

This new edition of The Princess and the Goblin is available as a premium, color paperback from Amazon here.

The Princess and Curdie (2023)

George MacDonald’s fairy tales are a garden of delights to Christian readers—both the children for whom they were written and the adults on whose laps they sit. Amid the success of Nissemand Press’s edition of The Princess and the Goblin (2018), we kept getting inquiries from devoted fans of George MacDonald as to when we would be following it up with an edition of The Princess and Curdie (that we should eventually do so was assumed by all to be a foregone conclusion). So I began to investigate whether there were enough illustrated editions of The Princess and Curdie to give it the same treatment we had given previously to The Princess and the Goblin. I found to my delight that there are no fewer than eight grand old editions now in the public domain, each of them lavishly decorated, and by some of the greatest names of the golden age of illustration. You will find the very best of their artwork (over 100 illustrations!) reproduced in this new edition.

This edition is also furnished with sidenotes to help with difficult vocabulary; also, references are given in the several places MacDonald quotes from Scripture or his favorite Romantic poets.

You can buy Nissemand Press’s edition of The Princess and Curdie on Amazon here.