Kickstarting Phantastes: The Book that Baptised C. S. Lewis’ Imagination

"I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book into the real world and resting there, transforming all common things and yet itself unchanged. Or, more accurately, I saw the common things drawn into the bright shadow." 

-- C. S. Lewis writes in Surprised By Joy on his reading of Phantastes

Three years ago we launched Cave Pictures Publishing with an article in the journal Convivium called Stories are Sherpas of the Soul about the role that story, and specifically George MacDonald’s Phantastes, played in C. S. Lewis journey of faith.  Consequently, one of our first graphic novels was MacDonald’s masterpiece, The Light Princess.

This week we were thrilled to launch a Kickstarter campaign for Phantastes, the book about which Lewis said led him from his atheism and growing fascination with the occult to “a good death” and the “baptism of his imagination.”

Image from Phantastes chapter 1

The great news is that barely 36 hours into our campaign we were already past 10% of our goal!  Not only that, but Kickstarter has taken note and named Phantastes a "Project We Love"!   We’d love you to help us make our goal by pre-ordering a copy (or several copies) of the graphic novel.

You may have heard about the book if you attended a recent screening of The Fellowship of Performing Artists’ outstanding film production of their stage play about C. S. Lewis called The Reluctant Convert. If you did not catch it, we are thrilled that its run has been extended through Dec.18, so don’t miss it this time!

The film quotes extensively from a passage in Lewis’s autobiography Surprised By Joy in which he tells of his first encounter with the book, and the role it played in his spiritual journey:

Movie cover of The Most Reluctant Covert

“It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought - almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that  bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions - the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier. I had already been waist-deep in Romanticism; and likely enough, at any moment, to flounder into its darker and more evil forms, slithering down the steep descent that leads from the love of strangeness to that of eccentricity and thence to that  of perversity. Now Phantastes was romantic enough in all conscience; but  there  was a difference. Nothing was at that time further  from my thoughts than Christianity  and I therefore  had  no notion  what  this difference really was. I was only aware that if this new  world was strange, it was also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort  of cool, morning innocence, and also, quite unmistakably, a certain quality of Death, good Death.

What it actually did to me was  to convert, even to baptize (that was where the Death came in) my imagination. It did nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to my conscience. Their turn came far later  and with the help of many other books and men. But when the process was complete - by which, of course, I  mean "when  it had really begun" - I found that I was still with MacDonald and that he had accompanied me all the way and that I was now at last ready to hear from him much that he could not have told me at that first meeting. But in a sense, what he was now telling me  was the very same that  he had told me  from the beginning. There was no question of getting through to the kernel and throwing away the shell: no question of a gilded pill. The pill was gold all through.”

George MacDonald

George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet and Christian minister who wrote prolifically at the end of the 19th century. He was a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature and was a close family friend and mentor of Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). His writings have influenced some of the greatest fantasy writers of the last century, including  J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan), Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum (Wonderful Wizard of Oz), T.H. White (The Sword and the Stone) and not surprisingly Lewis’s fellow Inkling J. R. R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings).  More recently Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time) and perhaps one of the greatest storytellers of our day, Neil Gaiman (Sandman and American Gods) were also influenced by MacDonald’s fantasy work.  

Meredith Finch, author

When the eminent author, theologian and social commentator G. K. Chesterton was asked to list the books that had the most influence on him, he said about George MacDonald’s book The Princess and the Goblin that it had “made a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start; a vision of things which even so real a revolution as a change of religious allegiance has substantially only crowned and confirmed … Of all the stories I have read, including even all the novels of the same novelist, it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life.” 

But none were as deeply influenced by MacDonald as Lewis was: “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master,” Lewis wrote in his preface to George MacDonald: An Anthology. “Indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him."  

We would not discourage you from picking up a copy of Phantastes and reading it like Lewis did, however many have found it a challenging read. We believe the acclaimed comic writer who adapted The Light Princess for us, Meredith Finch, has done an outstanding job in making the book accessible to everyone in the form of a graphic novel.

The artwork by Christine Norrie and Andrew Pepoy is stunning.  This version is something for all ages, but doesn’t lose the power that it had on Lewis as an adult.

Hardcover of Phantastes

The graphic novel will hold its own as an excellent story, well told.  But perhaps most importantly, Phantastes, like Cave’s other publications, will cultivate meaningful conversations with consequence.

We hope you join us in making the book that baptised C. S. Lewis’ imagination accessible again to a new generation of readers. It’s been over 75 years since the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and literally 100 years since Tolkeiin published his first “inkling” of Middle Earth. Order extra copies of Phantastes through the Kickstarter and share them with your family and friends. Perhaps reading Phantastes will inspire an author from this next generation to write a new great myth that echoes the “one true myth.”