Robert Falconer

Featuring an introduction by C.S. Lewis and twelve full-page illustrations by Leighton Isaacs

Following the success of David Jack's two-column "Scots-English" editions (which feature both languages side-by-side) this new "Standard Edition" remains unabridged, but with the dialogue translated and formatted more conventionally, from the former tongue to the latter. Only the easiest Scots words have been retained, removing the need to decipher while at the same time preserving something of the Scottish flavour which characterises this classic tale.

Robert Falconer is one of the greatest novels by George MacDonald, the man whom C.S. Lewis called his "master." In his introduction to this largely autobiographical work, C.S. Lewis states: "His best characters are those which reveal how much real charity and spiritual wisdom can co-exist with the profession of a theology that seems to encourage neither. His own grandmother, a truly terrible old woman who had burnt his uncle's fiddle as a Satanic snare, might well have appeared to him as what is now (inaccurately) called 'a mere sadist'. Yet when something very like her is delineated in Robert Falconer and again in What's Mine's Mine, we are compelled to look deeper-to see, inside the repellent crust something that we can whole-heartedly pity and even, with reservations, respect. In this way Macdonald illustrates, not the doubtful maxim that to know all is to forgive all, but the unshakeable truth that to forgive is to know. He who loves, sees."