Click "free sample" to read the whole book. No need to purchase. The Princess and the Goblin is a children's fantasy novel by George MacDonald. It was published in 1872 by Strahan & Co., with black-and-white illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Strahan had published the story and illustrations as a serial in the monthly magazine Good Words for the Young, beginning November 1870. Anne Thaxter Eaton writes in A Critical History of Children's Literature that The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel "quietly suggest in every incident ideas of courage and honor."Jeffrey Holdaway, in the New Zealand Art Monthly, said that both books start out as "normal fairytales, but slowly become stranger", and that they contain layers of symbolism similar to that of Lewis Carroll's work.