This new edition of George MacDonald's 1867 classic, the first in the Marshmallows Trilogy, is updated and introduced by Michael Phillips as Volume 6 in The Cullen Collection.
This first of George MacDonald’s major English novels, published in 1867, was set in the village of Arundel on the downs south of London near the channel coast. It was the site of MacDonald’s first and only pastorate as a newly married minister in 1851-53. This book is wonderfully descriptive of the region, with autobiographical hints of MacDonald’s outlook as a young pastor. Chronicling the daily life of one of MacDonald’s fictionalized “ideal ministers”—perhaps a portrayal of the shepherd-pastor MacDonald had himself hoped to be—the Annals proved to be one of his most popular novels.
First released in the Sunday Magazine, which was intended for “Sabbath reading,” Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood was quickly published in numerous book editions and contributed in a significant way to MacDonald’s growing popularity in America. Though less spine-riveting of plot, the three volumes of the Marshmallows Trilogy spawned by Annals provide some of MacDonald’s most homiletic and deeply spiritual writings.
The story of a young minister and his flock—first in the three volumes of the series—continues with The Seaboard Parish and The Vicar’s Daughter.
385 pages
