Except for the Bible, Homer’s Odyssey, and a few others, Phantastes is the best book I’ve ever read. It’s a fairy-tale romance, full of myth, poetry, and allegory. The story is thrilling, unsettling, and thought-provoking. The main character finds himself in a fairy world full of beauty, strange encounters, danger, and both evil and good characters. He learns a shocking lesson. (I gasped when I got to the punch line.)

C.S. Lewis read this story during his late teenage years, and it had a strong effect on his imagination. He regarded George MacDonald, the author, as his “master” in the art of storytelling. Lewis would later write an introduction, which can be read in this edition: it helps the reader understand the value of mythopoetry.

Lewis wrote: “…It arouses in us sensations we have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness and ‘possessed joys not promised to our birth.’ …”

There are lessons in this story that a young person should consider carefully, including: what it means to really love someone, the sacredness of honest work, and the priceless value of wisdom and virtue. Some of the scenes, but really the entire sequence of events, are impossible to forget. I recommend this book to students in their late teens as they move into young adulthood.

MacDonald, a Scot, published the book in 1858, just before the American Civil War.