With Orts printed throughout as the title, I doubt it suits the book. Yet no one could think I associate worthlessness with the work in it: nobody insults readers by offering what he counts valueless scraps and saying so. These papers, even the two taken down by a ready writer from extempore speech, cost me no small labour, and a man ought to be able to say that much for his work. So I might defend my title, if not quite justify it, for they are only fragmentary presentments of larger meditation. My friends will accept them so, whether or not they like the title.
The last piece’s title does not quite fit: it is the name of the religious newspaper that reported the sermon, noticed too late to correct. It ought to be True Greatness.
The Fantastic Imagination arose from readers’ repeated requests that I explain things in certain shorter stories of mine; it is the preface to an American edition of my so-called Fairy Tales.
GEORGE MACDONALD.
EDENBRIDGE, KENT. August 5, 1893.
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
THE IMAGINATION: ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS CULTURE.
A SKETCH OF INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT.
ST. GEORGE’S DAY, 1564.
THE ART OF SHAKSPERE, AS REVEALED BY HIMSELF.
THE ELDER HAMLET.
ON POLISH.
BROWNING’S “CHRISTMAS EVE”
ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE FORMS OF LITERATURE
THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF MEDICINE.
WORDSWORTH’S POETRY
SHELLEY.
A SERMON.
TRUE CHRISTIAN MINISTERING.
THE FANTASTIC IMAGINATION