Robert Falconer by MacDonald, George

Perhaps George MacDonald’s most well-known novel and which details the life story of his most memorable character. The character of “Robert Falconer” had been with MacDonald a long time, first from the unpublished Seekers and Finders (1859-60), then briefly appearing in David Elginbrod, and later in a much abbreviated serialized story (1866-67) called “The History of Robert Falconer.”

Robert Falconer, like Alec Forbes of Howglen, is a highly autobiographical work, with this difference: in the character of young Robert Falconer, the reader gains a rare glimpse into MacDonald’s own boyhood, with his internal struggles, his relationship with his grandmother (who largely raised him after the death of his mother) and his spiritual search as a young man attempting to discover God’s love amid the hellfire Calvinism of his upbringing.