Originally serialized in 1868 and collected as a book in 1871, At the Back of the North Wind is the magical story of Diamond, the son of a poor coachman, who is swept away by the North Wind – a radiant, maternal spirit with long, flowing hair – and whose life is transformed by a brief glimpse of the beautiful country – at the back of the north wind.

It combines a Dickensian regard for the working class of mid-19th-century England with the invention of an ethereal landscape. More than a century after it was written, George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind continues to intrigue with its allegorical treatment of life and death. The great Christian writer C. S. Lewis, working a generation later, called MacDonald “the greatest genius of his kind.” Find out for yourself what so impressed Lewis and countless readers.