The twelve novels MacDonald set in his homeland make frequent use of Scots dialogue, which has posed a problem for many would-be readers. This new edition of DONAL GRANT, the sequel to SIR GIBBIE, and book four in the translation series, provides the complete original text, but places English side-by-side with the Scots. Also featured is an introduction by renowned MacDonald authority and best-selling author Michael Phillips, along with more of the distinguished artwork of SIR GIBBIE’s illustrator Carrie Stout.
In his preface, translator David Jack praises DONAL GRANT as “a story-sermon par excellence” in which MacDonald blends his powerful mythmaking with his no less powerful preaching: the result being “a kind of fairy-tale for grown-ups.” Donal himself he compares to the author, claiming that both bring us (as Donal brings the proud but unhappy heiress Lady Arctura) “news from a far country, for the lack of which she had been slowly perishing.”
“Jack’s deft side-by-side translations now make this delightful sequel to the celebrated Sir Gibbie accessible to any reader ready to sojourn with the young Scots poet, Donal Grant. Celtic Romance and Victorian Gothic combine in Coleridgean mysteries with surprisingly modern psychological insight, as Donal and his students fall in love with both the earthly and divine.”
DR. KIRSTIN JEFFREY JOHNSON, MacDonald scholar and co-editor of Informing the Inklings
494 pages