George MacDonald was the great nineteenth-century innovator of modern fantasy, who influenced the work of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. This book collects some of his finest fairy stories, including 'The Gray Wolf,' 'The Cruel Painter,' 'The Broken Swords,' 'The Wow O'Rivven, the Bell' 'Uncle Cornelius, His Story,' 'The Butcher's Bills,' and 'Birth, Dreaming, Death.''I do not write,' MacDonald once said, 'for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.' Here then, for the childlike of all ages, is a collection of seven stories certain to delight both confirmed MacDonald readers and those about to meet him for the first time.