At the Back of the North Wind (1972)
At the Back of the North Wind is a 1972 fairy tales book written by George MacDonald.
Diamond is a coachman's son, named for his father's horse, who sleeps in a loft above the stable. One night the North Wind visits him as a tall, dark-haired woman, sometimes gentle and sometimes terrible, and carries him out over sleeping London and across the sea. George MacDonald, writing in 1871, threads real Victorian hardship, sick children, lost wages, and cold streets, through a dreamlike fantasy about a boy who moves between the waking world and somewhere stranger. The book folds in the fairy tale Little Daylight and reads as both a children's story and a quiet meditation on mortality.
Quick answers
What is At the Back of the North Wind about?
Diamond is a coachman's son, named for his father's horse, who sleeps in a loft above the stable. One night the North Wind visits him as a tall, dark-haired woman, sometimes gentle and sometimes terrible, and carries him out over sleeping London and across the sea. George MacDonald, writing in 1871, threads real Victorian hardship, sick children, lost wages, and cold streets, through a dreamlike fantasy about a boy who moves between the waking world and somewhere stranger. The book folds in the fairy tale Little Daylight and reads as both a children's story and a quiet meditation on mortality.
When was At the Back of the North Wind published?
At the Back of the North Wind was published in 1972.
Who made At the Back of the North Wind?
At the Back of the North Wind was written by George MacDonald.
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A few thoughts on At the Back of the North Wind
George MacDonald shaped the fantasies that followed him, and readers can feel his lineage in the Narnia films, where children pass from a hard ordinary world into a numinous one. Coraline works the same nerve from a darker angle, with its own uncanny woman waiting on the far side of a threshold.
Fantasy where an otherworldly guide carries a child out of their life
Diamond follows the North Wind, sometimes gentle and sometimes terrible, out over London and across the sea. Coraline gets pulled through a door by an uncanny mother-figure who is not what she seems, the Pevensie children step through a wardrobe into Narnia, Percy Jackson gets pulled into a hidden world of gods hiding in plain sight, and The Stolen Princess sends its heroine into a fairy-tale kingdom mid-abduction.
Films that fold a classic fairy tale inside their own story
MacDonald tucks the fairy tale Little Daylight inside Diamond's own adventures, a story within the story. Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure keeps spinning new fairy-tale side-quests around its heroine, Charming remixes several classic tales into one kingdom, Child of Kamiari Month sends its lead into a hidden world built from Japanese folklore, and Miraculous World: Shanghai borrows an old dragon legend to power its own plot.
All-ages fantasy comics that wander deeper into a stranger world
Diamond's nights with the North Wind push him further from the world he knows each time, an escalating strangeness rather than one trip. Digger follows a wombat tunneling deeper into a myth-soaked underground, The Lost Warrior sends a cat out of the only home she knows, Tower of God's hero climbs further into a world stranger the higher he goes, and Radiant follows a boy chasing sorcery into unmapped country.