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Informationen zum Autor George MacDonald (Author) George MacDonald (1824-1905) was born in Scotland and moved to London after studying science at Aberdeen University. He became a part of the literary scene of the times and wrote poetry and novels for adults, turning quite late in life to writing fiction for children, inspired by his large family. At the Back of the North Wind was published in 1871, a fantasy masterpiece which had first been serialized in a magazine. The two following years saw the publication of his other two much-loved novels for children, The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and the Curdie. Ursula Le Guin (Introducer) Ursula Le Guin was born in Berkley, California, in 1929, daughter of the writer Theodora Krober and the anthropologist Alfred Krober. Her published work includes twenty-one novels, eleven volumes of short stories, three collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation. Among her novels are the The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed , both winners of the Nebula and Hugo awards, Always Coming Home , winner of the 1985 Kafka Award, and Four Ways to Forgiveness . In 2009 she won her sixth Nebula award for Powers . She died in January 2018 aged 88. Penguin/Puffin published the first volume of the Earthsea books, A Wizard of Earthsea , in 1971. The Earthsea books have been translated into many languages around the world and are global bestsellers. Klappentext Multiple Nebula and Hugo award-winner Le Guin contributes a new Introduction to this edition of McDonald's tale of a princess whose discovery of a secret stair at the top turret of a castle leads to a wonderful revelation. CHAPTER 1 Why the Princess Has a Story about Her There was once a little princess whose father was king over a great country full of mountains and valleys. His palace was built upon one of the mountains and was very grand and beautiful. The princess, whose name was Irene, was born there, but she was sent soon after her birth, because her mother was not very strong, to be brought up by country people in a large house, half castle, half farmhouse, on the side of another mountain, about halfway between its base and its peak. The princess was a sweet little creature and at the time my story begins was about eight years old, I think, but she got older very fast. Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue. Those eyes, you would have thought, must have known they came from there, so often were they turned up in that direction. The ceiling of her nursery was blue with stars in it, as like the sky as they could make it. But I doubt if ever she saw the real sky with the stars in it, for a reason, which I had better mention at once. These mountains were full of hollow places underneath, huge caverns and winding ways, some with water running through them and some shining with all colors of the rainbow when a light was taken in. There would not have been much known about them had there not been mines there, great deep pits, with long galleries and passages running off from them, which had been dug to get at the ore of which the mountains were full. In the course of digging the miners came upon many of these natural caverns. A few of them had far-off openings out on the side of a mountain or into a ravine. Now in these subterranean caverns lived a strange race of beings, called by some gnomes, by some kobolds, by some goblins. There was a legend current in the country that at one time they lived above ground and were very like other people. But for some reason or other, concerning which there were different legendary theories, the king had laid what they thought too severe taxes upon them, or required observances of them they did not like, or had begun to ...
