Rose Library › Wisdom Tales: Fairy Stories of the Hidden Path Mystical Tale

Lilith: A Romance

George MacDonald · 1895 · 93,209 words

MacDonald's luminous late vision of sleep, death and awakening, where every soul is drawn at last toward its true home.

Read it now

Opening

Chapter I — The Library

I had just finished my studies at Oxford, and was taking a brief holiday from work before assuming definitely the management of the estate. My father died when I was yet a child; my mother followed him within a year; and I was nearly as much alone in the world as a man might find himself.

I had made little acquaintance with the history of my ancestors. Almost the only thing I knew concerning them was, that a notable number of them had been given to study. I had myself so far inherited the tendency as to devote a good deal of my time, though, I confess, after a somewhat desultory fashion, to the physical sciences. It was chiefly the wonder they woke that drew me. I was constantly seeing, and on the outlook to see, strange analogies, not only between the facts of different sciences of the same order, or between physical and metaphysical facts, but between physical hypotheses and suggestions glimmering out of the metaphysical dreams into which I was in the habit of falling. I was at the same time much given to a premature indulgence of the impulse to turn hypothesis into theory. Of my mental peculiarities there is no occasion to say more.

Continue reading in the Rose Library →

Contents

  1. Chapter I — The Library
  2. Chapter II — The Mirror
  3. Chapter III — The Raven
  4. Chapter IV — Somewhere or Nowhere?
  5. Chapter V — The Old Church
  6. Chapter VI — The Sexton’s Cottage
  7. Chapter VII — The Cemetery
  8. Chapter VIII — My Father’s Manuscript
  9. Chapter IX — I Repent
  10. Chapter X — The Bad Burrow
  11. Chapter XI — The Evil Wood
  12. Chapter XII — Friends and Foes
  13. Chapter XIII — The Little Ones
  14. Chapter XIV — A Crisis
  15. Chapter XV — A Strange Hostess
  16. Chapter XVI — A Gruesome Dance
  17. Chapter XVII — A Grotesque Tragedy
  18. Chapter XVIII — Dead or Alive?
  19. Chapter XIX — The White Leech
  20. Chapter XX — Gone!—but How?
  21. Chapter XXI — The Fugitive Mother
  22. Chapter XXII — Bulika
  23. Chapter XXIII — A Woman of Bulika
  24. Chapter XXIV — The White Leopardess
  25. Chapter XXV — The Princess
  26. Chapter XXVI — A Battle Royal
  27. Chapter XXVII — The Silent Fountain
  28. Chapter XXVIII — I Am Silenced
  29. Chapter XXIX — The Persian Cat
  30. Chapter XXX — Adam Explains
  31. Chapter XXXI — The Sexton’s Old Horse
  32. Chapter XXXII — The Lovers and the Bags
  33. Chapter XXXIII — Lona’s Narrative
  34. Chapter XXXIV — Preparation
  35. Chapter XXXV — The Little Ones in Bulika
  36. Chapter XXXVI — Mother and Daughter
  37. Chapter XXXVII — The Shadow
  38. Chapter XXXVIII — To the House of Bitterness
  39. Chapter XXXIX — That Night
  40. Chapter XL — The House of Death
  41. Chapter XLI — I Am Sent
  42. Chapter XLII — I Sleep the Sleep
  43. Chapter XLIII — The Dreams That Came
  44. Chapter XLIV — The Waking
  45. Chapter XLV — The Journey Home
  46. Chapter XLVI — The City
  47. Chapter XLVII — The “Endless Ending”

About this edition

Source: Project Gutenberg #1640

Public domain: First published 1895; public domain in the United States.

What’s included: The complete text.

In the Rose Library you can search every word of this book, have it read aloud, and save it to read offline.