Citation: George MacDonald, John Hill MacDonald, and Greville Matheson, A Threefold Cord: Poems by Three Friends (Not to be had of any booksellers, but by application to Mr. William Hughes, 43 Beaufort Street, Chelsea. London, 1883).
A Threefold Cord: Poems by Three Friends. Edited by George MacDonald. Not to be had of any booksellers, but by application to Mr. William Hughes, 43 Beaufort Street, Chelsea. London; price 5s. (1883).
51 in. x 34 in.: pp. (viii) + 349 + (7): printed on pink paper by Unwin Brothers, Chilworth and London.
Dedicated in a sonnet, dated Casa Coraggio, Bordighera, May, 1883, to Greville Matheson MacDonald, M.D., MacDonald’s eldest son.
No copy in the British Museum. I have examined Dr. Greville MacDonald’s copy.
William Hughes, who sold it at his mother’s house, was a nephew of Arthur Hughes, who illustrated many of MacDonald’s fairy stories.
“The Three Friends” were George MacDonald himself, his brother John Hill MacDonald (1830-1858), and Greville Matheson (died 1872), who was a bank clerk, and whom MacDonald described as the “man whose literary judgment and sympathy I prized beyond that of the world
besides.” MacDonald named his eldest son and biographer after Matheson, whose niece Annie biographed MacDonald in the “D. N. B.” There is no indication as to the authorship of the various poems in “A Threefold cord,” but Mr. Joseph Johnson states in his book on George MacDonald (p. 61) that more than sixty of the poems were composed by MacDonald, twenty-two by Greville Matheson, and the rest by John Hill MacDonald, who wrote the poems in “ Robert Falconer.” Mr. Johnson got from MacDonald a copy with all the authors’ names written in.
- The 1883 edition contains 181 poems and the 1893 reprint in the “Poetical works ” has 159. Twenty of the poems were transferred in the latter to “ Scots songs and ballads.” Nine are transferred to other sections of the 1893 edition. The sonnet beginning “ I have a fellowship” is transferred from one place to another in “A Threefold cord” itself: all the other poems remain in the same order as the original edition, while many that had no title originally were reprinted in 1898 with titles. Four were not reprinted. Five were added to the 1893 issue.
- In 1891-94 a “ magazine for thoughtful men and women ” was published under the title A Threefold Card. It had no connection with MacDonald.
- 1893. Reprinted in the “Poetical works ” (ii., 201-362).
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