Audiobook · read by volunteers
David Elginbrod
George MacDonald (1824–1905)
Read by Kenneth R. Morefield · 71 chapters · 17 h 49
About the book
David Elginbrod is a Scottish countryman of deep faith and plain wisdom, and the novel that bears his name is a story of country life and of spiritual questions. A young tutor, Hugh Sutherland, arrives at a great house and finds that his path crosses with that of the Elginbrod family, whose quiet convictions will shape his future. Around them move gentry, servants, schemers and seekers, with strange events and a few unexpected visitors from beyond. George MacDonald draws on the landscape and dialect of Scotland, and the story moves between humour, mystery and earnest reflection. One voice reads all 71 short chapters, taking the listener through nearly eighteen hours of a novel that was an immediate success. It is a work for those who enjoy long, character-driven stories. Faith, love and mystery are woven together throughout.
Introduction
George MacDonald, born in 1824 and died in 1905, was a Scottish minister, poet and novelist, and one of the most influential writers of fantasy in the nineteenth century. He is best known today for his fairy tales and for The Princess and the Goblin, and his admirers included C. S. Lewis, who called him his master. David Elginbrod, however, belongs to his realistic fiction. It was his first real success as a novelist, which appeared in the early 1860s.
The novel is a story of Scottish country life, with its dialect, its farms and its churches, and its Christian faith is never far from the surface. MacDonald believed deeply in a gentle, loving idea of God, and his fiction returns again and again to the question of how human beings may grow in goodness. Here the questions are given a human face, in the person of the Scottish countryman whose name serves as the title. The book also leaves room for mystery and for a touch of the supernatural, in keeping with the author’s interest in the unseen.
The recording consists of 71 chapters and runs to nearly eighteen hours, all read by one LibriVox volunteer. It is a leisurely work in the Victorian manner, best enjoyed over several weeks. Today, it is worth hearing as an example of the Scottish novel of its time and as a way to meet an author whose ideas are still admired. The long running time allows for a slow, immersive experience in which the setting and the characters gradually become familiar. Readers who like Victorian novels with a spiritual dimension will find it especially satisfying, and the Scottish scenes bring a distinctive colour to the whole.
Public domain
George MacDonald died in 1905: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text