George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

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For many readers, the genre of modern fantasy begins with J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 children’s novel,

The Hobbit

, which famously opens with the sentence: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” (3). According to the author, this sentence seemed to dance out of thin air as he was grading School Certificate papers:

[a candidate] had mercifully left one of the pages with no writing on it (which is the best thing that can possibly happen to an examiner) and I wrote on it…Names always generated a story in my mind. Eventually I thought I’d better find out what hobbits were like. (Shippey 2)

[a candidate] had mercifully left one of the pages with no writing on it (which is the best thing that can possibly happen to an examiner) and I wrote on it…Names always generated a…

3169 words

Citation: Grasso, Joshua. "The Princess and the Goblin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 June 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24712, accessed 02 December 2024.]

24712 The Princess and the Goblin 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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