TOLKIEN'S BOOKSHELF #5: THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN J.R.R. Tolkien was a great admirer of George MacDonald's fairy-stories. When his children were young, he used to read The Princess and the Goblin to them in the evenings, before they went to bed. In a 1938 letter to the Observer newspaper, Tolkien stated that some ideas in The Hobbit "derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story-not, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George MacDonald is the chief exception". 'Tolkien knew well MacDonald's children's books The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, both of which influenced Tolkien's depiction of goblins in The Hobbit,' writes Douglas A. Anderson in Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy. There are many reflections of MacDonald's 'Princess' books in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - not least, the goblins themselves. The wise, magical, prescient grandmother of the Princess Irene, seems to be a literary ancestor of Galadriel; centuries old and yet looking young, a queen, a healer, a beautiful, golden-haired woman associated with water. Princess Irene has a magic ring which is associated with invisibility, being linked to a semi-visible thread. This ring aids her in an escape from the Goblin Underground, much as The One Ring aids Bilbo. This edition contains the delicately beautiful illustrations of Jessie Willcox Smith, much-loved by generations of children to this very day.
