George MacDonald

The Princess and the Goblin

First published
1872 (December 1871)
Length
51,000 words, about 4 hours' reading

Begin reading

Princess Irene, the miner boy Curdie, the goblins under the mountain, and the grandmother in the tower.

Contents

  1. Chapter 1. Why the Princess Has a Story About Her
  2. Chapter 2. The Princess Loses Herself
  3. Chapter 3. The Princess and—We Shall See Who
  4. Chapter 4. What the Nurse Thought of It
  5. Chapter 5. The Princess Lets Well Alone
  6. Chapter 6. The Little Miner
  7. Chapter 7. The Mines
  8. Chapter 8. The Goblins
  9. Chapter 9. The Hall of the Goblin Palace
  10. Chapter 10. The Princess's King-Papa
  11. Chapter 11. The Old Lady's Bedroom
  12. Chapter 12. A Short Chapter About Curdie
  13. Chapter 13. The Cobs' Creatures
  14. Chapter 14. That Night Week
  15. Chapter 15. Woven and Then Spun
  16. Chapter 16. The Ring
  17. Chapter 17. Springtime
  18. Chapter 18. Curdie's Clue
  19. Chapter 19. Goblin Counsels
  20. Chapter 20. Irene's Clue
  21. Chapter 21. The Escape
  22. Chapter 22. The Old Lady and Curdie
  23. Chapter 23. Curdie and His Mother
  24. Chapter 24. Irene Behaves Like a Princess
  25. Chapter 25. Curdie Comes to Grief
  26. Chapter 26. The Goblin-Miners
  27. Chapter 27. The Goblins in the King's House
  28. Chapter 28. Curdie's Guide
  29. Chapter 29. Masonwork
  30. Chapter 30. The King and the Kiss
  31. Chapter 31. The Subterranean Waters
  32. Chapter 32. The Last Chapter

About this digital edition

How the text was made, and the printer's errors corrected

The text is Project Gutenberg’s transcription (ebook #708), from the public-domain printed edition, made by volunteers.

For this site it was converted to Markdown: Project Gutenberg’s header and licence, the printed page numbers, and the printed table of contents were removed, and the headings were regularised so the book divides into chapters. The words of the text are as Project Gutenberg gives them.

Arthur Hughes’s illustrations come from a scan of the 1911 Blackie edition at the Internet Archive (princessgoblin00macd2), which reprints the thirty drawings he made for the first edition of 1872. Its coloured plates, by a later artist, are left out.