Fiction · 1864
The Light Princess
The Light Princess tells of a princess cursed at birth by her spiteful aunt with the loss of all her gravity — she floats, laughs at everything including her own parents' fear for her, and can only be made to feel her own weight, briefly and wonderfully, in water — until the lake she loves to swim in begins mysteriously draining away, and the one cure anyone can find requires a stranger's willing sacrifice.
George MacDonald published the story in 1864, within his novel Adela Cathcart, before it was later republished as a standalone fairy tale; its central image — a princess literally without gravity, and the play on "light" as both weightless and unserious — has made it one of his most frequently reprinted works for children.
Bibliomancer publishes the 1864 text exactly as George MacDonald wrote it.
Contents
- 1 — What! No Children?
- 2 — Won’t I, Just?
- 3 — She Can’t Be Ours
- 4 — Where Is She?
- 5 — What Is to Be Done?
- 6 — She Laughs Too Much
- 7 — Try Metaphysics
- 8 — Try a Drop of Water
- 9 — Put Me in Again
- 10 — Look at the Moon
- 11 — Hiss!
- 12 — Where Is the Prince?
- 13 — Here I Am
- 14 — This Is Very Kind of You
- 15 — Look at the Rain!
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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