Marshmallows Trilogy

The story of a young minister and his flock-first in the Scottish author's Marshmallows Trilogy including The Seaboard Parish and The Vicar's Daughter. MacDonald's first major English novel, published in 1867, was set in the village of Arundel on the downs south of London near the south channel coast. It was the site of MacDonald's first and only pastorate as a newly married minister in 1851-53. This book is wonderfully descriptive of the region, with autobiographical hints of MacDonald's outlook as a young pastor. Chronicling the daily life of one of MacDonald's fictionalized "ideal ministers"-perhaps a portrayal of the shepherd-pastor MacDonald had himself hoped to be-the Annals proved one of his most popular novels. First released in the Sunday Magazine, which was intended for "Sabbath reading," Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood was quickly published in numerous book editions and contributed in a significant way to MacDonald's growing popularity in America. Though less spine-riveting of plot, the three volumes of the Marshmallows Trilogy spawned by Annals provide some of MacDonald's most homiletic and deeply spiritual writings.

The publication in 1868 of this sequel to Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood capped off one of George MacDonald's most productive years with a third major fiction work following Robert Falconer and Guild Court. Set in the Cornwall seaside town of Bude and inspired by a MacDonald family holiday a few years earlier, this novel continues the leisurely pastoral pace of minister Harry Walton's family. Like Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, it was first written for "Sabbath reading" in the Sunday Magazine. Almost taking the form of a "family diary," A Seaboard Parish is yet rich with spiritual insight and wisdom.

The Vicar's Daughter, the 1872 sequel to The Seaboard Parish, follows the early married life of one of Harry Walton's (fictional narrator of Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood) daughters. This third book in The Marshmallows Trilogy is representative of the rising interest women were taking in Victorian society. Written in the first person in the fictional guise of female authorship, its characterization of MacDonald's friend and patron Lady Noel Byron is one of the noteworthy elements of the book.