The Work
At the Back of the North Wind was first published serially in the children's magazine Good Words for the Young from November 1868 to October 1870, with illustrations by Arthur Hughes, and then published as a complete book by Strahan and Co. in 1871. It is the first of MacDonald's three great fantasy novels for children (followed by The Princess and the Goblin, 1872, and The Princess and Curdie, 1883) and the one most directly concerned with the theology of death.
The novel follows Diamond, the young son of a London coachman, who has a succession of night journeys with the North Wind - a tall, beautiful, maternal figure who can change size at will, who shows Diamond both the terrible and the gentle aspects of her nature, and who eventually carries him to the mysterious country 'at the back of the North Wind.' This country, glimpsed only briefly in the novel, is a place of perfect peace and beauty that Diamond can barely remember upon return, but whose reality transforms his waking life.
C.S. Lewis named MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind as the first book that introduced him to the quality he later called 'holiness' - a quality he distinguished from goodness or morality and identified as the divine numinous. Lewis's account of first reading MacDonald is in his autobiography Surprised by Joy.
Biblical Engagement
Psalm 139:7-10 ('Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me') is MacDonald's primary biblical reference for the North Wind's ubiquitous, inescapable presence. The North Wind appears everywhere - as a gentle breeze, as a terrifying storm, as the maternal figure at Diamond's bedside window - just as the Spirit of God in Psalm 139 is present in every dimension of the created order.
John 3:8 ('The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit') is the Johannine text that explicitly identifies wind with Spirit. MacDonald exploits this identification throughout the novel: the North Wind is simultaneously the natural force of wind and a spiritual presence, and Diamond's relationship with her is simultaneously a natural adventure and a spiritual formation. The North Wind's freedom - she 'blows where she lists' - is precisely the freedom of the Spirit.
Revelation 21:4 ('And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away') is the eschatological promise that the land 'at the back of the North Wind' embodies. MacDonald does not describe this land in detail - Diamond's descriptions are vague and beautiful - but its essential quality is the absence of pain and the presence of a peace that surpasses understanding (Philippians 4:7).
John 10:10 ('I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly') is the Christological context: the North Wind, for all her terrifying power (she can sink ships and cause death), is ultimately a life-giving figure. Her destruction of the coal barge is presented not as malice but as mysterious necessity - she sometimes must cause suffering and death in order to serve a larger purpose whose goodness Diamond cannot yet see.
Author and Context
George MacDonald (1824-1905) was born in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, into a Congregationalist family of strong Calvinist roots. He was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, and Highbury Theological College, London, and was ordained as a Congregationalist minister. His ministry was brief and troubled: his congregation dismissed him in 1853, partly over his unconventionally hopeful views on eternal life (he suggested in a sermon that even the heathen might eventually be saved). After this dismissal he supported his large family (eleven children) by writing - novels, poetry, fairy tales, and the theological essays collected in Unspoken Sermons.
MacDonald's theology was shaped by German Romanticism (especially Novalis, whom he translated) and by the mystical tradition of Jacob Boehme. He moved consistently away from Calvinist predestinarianism toward a universalist theology of divine Fatherhood - a theology in which God's character is primarily defined by love rather than sovereignty, and in which punishment serves the purpose of purification rather than retribution. This theology pervades all his fiction, including At the Back of the North Wind.
Themes
The novel is primarily a theology of death for children. MacDonald recognized that children face death - of pets, of grandparents, of themselves when ill - and that the Victorian cult of sentimentalized death-bed scenes was inadequate to prepare them for the reality. His counter-image is the North Wind: death is not an enemy but a companion, not a punishment but a passage, not an ending but a door into a richer reality. Diamond's experience of dying - for the novel's ending implies his death - is presented as a homecoming.
The novel is also a theology of the present life transformed by contact with the divine. Diamond, having visited the back of the North Wind, returns to London and lives differently: with unusual patience, kindness, and attention to others. His neighbors notice that he is different - his father says 'Something has touched our Diamond.' This transformation through contact with the transcendent is MacDonald's image of the spiritual life.
Reception
The novel was immediately popular and has remained in print continuously. Arthur Hughes's illustrations became inseparable from the text in the popular imagination. Later illustrators, including Jesse Wilcox Smith and Maria Louise Kirk, produced notable editions. The novel's treatment of death was praised by Victorian readers accustomed to the genre of consolation literature, though some found it theologically unorthodox.
Legacy
MacDonald's influence on the twentieth century was mediated primarily through C.S. Lewis, who claimed MacDonald as his 'master' and said the Unspoken Sermons had baptized his imagination before his conversion. Lewis's Narnia books are unimaginable without MacDonald's prior creation of the Christian children's fantasy tradition. At the Back of the North Wind specifically influenced Lewis's treatment of death in the Narnia series - especially the 'further up and further in' of The Last Battle - and his account of Sehnsucht (longing for the transcendent) in Surprised by Joy.