George MacDonald
A floating princess and a goblin kingdom, from a pioneer of Victorian fantasy.
George MacDonald wrote fairy tales that later fantasy writers openly borrowed from, and both of our recordings show why: the invention is strange, the telling is kind.
The Light Princess is the one-night option. A princess cursed at her christening grows up without any gravity, floating off furniture and laughing at everything, and the story stays as buoyant as she is. Andrew Bond's reading, on Send Me To Sleep, suits a single evening or two.
The Princess and the Goblin is the longer commitment, MacDonald's 1872 classic about a princess, a miner's son, and the goblins tunneling beneath their mountain. There is menace in it, but menace of the candlelit kind, held at bay by a grandmother's thread; the danger stays underground while the comfort stays upstairs. Elizabeth Grace's version runs on The Sleepy Bookshelf. Start with the floating princess, and descend to the goblins when you want a story with more corridor.
