Beta stage of development: Content for many pages will be added or enhanced over the course of the 2026-27 academic year. We hope you share our excitement as we move forward together. Come join us!

We offer a special thanks to David Corbly (opendoorcreations.com), who set up the WordPress installation on his hosting platform at no charge to the Society.

Resources moved from the current site

  1. Places — moved to Life > Places.
  2. Tributes — moved to Orts > Tributes.
  3. George MacDonald Biographical Introduction — moved to Life and List by Genre. Who wrote this?
  4. George MacDonald – Obituary. The Manchester Guardian. — moved to new page under References for MacDonald’s Life. Do we have verification of this transcript? Or a pdf facsimile? Note: it is not under our copyright.
  5. G.K. Chesterton’s Introduction to George MacDonald and His Wife (by Greville M. MacDonald. 1924.) — moved to new page under References for MacDonald’s Life.
  6. The Shadows. First publication: Adela Cathcart. 1864 — moved to new page linked to from The Shadows page and from the Adela Cathcart page.
  7. The Golden Key. — Moved to new page linked to from The Golden Key. Who wants to verify it? Add page #s?
  8. The Fantastic Imagination. — Moved to new page under Orts works page. Needs verification, citation, and page numbers.
  9. A Sketch of Individual Development. — Moved to new page under Orts works page. Needs verification, citation, and page numbers.
  10. The Imagination: Its Function and its Culture. — Moved to new page under Orts works page.
  11. Novalis — Hymns to the Night. Rampolli (1897). — Moved to new page linked to from the Rampolli and Exotics and Novalis pages.
  12. The Spiritual Structure of Lilith. A paraphrase of the first draft by MacDonald’s son Greville. Notes by John Docherty. — Moved to Orts > Essays
  13. George MacDonald and the “Light Princess” By Bob Trexler. — Moved to Orts > Essays
  14. The Gifts of the Child Christ. Moved to a new page linked to from The Gifts of the Child Christ.
  15. Mark Twain & George MacDonald: The Salty and the Sweet, by Kathryn Lindskoog. — Moved to Orts > Essays.
  16. Links In A Golden Chain: C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald and Sadhu Sundar Singh by Kathryn Lindskoog.– Moved to Orts > Essays.
  17. Faith, the Proof of the Unseen. Preached in Brixton Congregational Church, Last Sunday Morning, June 1882. — moved to new page accessed from the Sermons index. Can we can verify the accuracy of the transcription, the source, and the page numbers?
  18. A Manchester Poem. — Moved to new page, accessed from the Poems index. Source?
  19. Somnium Mystici: A Microcosm in Terza Rima. George MacDonald. — moved to a new page accessed from the Poems index. What is the source? Is this is Poetical Works? Where was it first published? Marilylle Soveran evidently provided the text.
  20. Selected Poems of GMD. Moved to a new page accessed from the Poems index. What is the citation for the source of these transcriptions? Are they verified?
  21. The Carasoyn. The first part of this fairy tale appeared as “The Fairy Fleet” in Argosy (1866). The expanded form “The Carasoyn” appeared in Works (1871). — moved to a new page and linked to from The Carasoyn source page.
  22. A Letter to American Boys. Moved to new page accessed under the Letters menu. No citation or source indicated. Where is this from?

Not yet moved:

  1. Image galleries — we will move these over (mainly for places) after implementing an image plug-in. We will then also be able to invite contributions of guided tours of MacDonald sites, and make a call for materials (eg photos of MacDonald-related documents, letters, artifacts that we are able to put online).
  2. A Letter to American Boys. Moved to new page. No citation or source indicated. Where is this from?

General

  1. Society logo on top menu linked to home. Danny will send logo from John Flynn.
  2. WordPress plugin: maps. What are the features we need for mapping?
  3. WordPress plugin: Forminator is now installed; see Contact Us under the About menu. What are the features we need for forms? Comments will be by members only. Forms can come from anyone.
  4. WordPress plugin: Images. What are the features we need for images, image galleries, and image viewing?
  5. WordPress plugin: Tags. What are the features we need for tags?

Members only

  • Member directory, with an option for any member to opt out on a year by year basis. Searchable by country, state or province, as well as member-selected subject areas.

Blue menu bar:

  1. Browse the menus and note all the pages that need content. Some will be straightforward, such as the Officers page. Some require writing from scratch, such as the History of the Society and a Bibliographical Essay. Please volunteer for any page you like! We need many members to contribute to various pages. We will benefit from having a web team to divide supervision of the different sections of the website. This website is a project in the digital humanities, different in nature than what came before.
  2. Navigation: All the top menu items, if clicked on, go to pages that eventually will contain links matching the pop-up menu hierarchy. That navigation is necessary for accessibility. In addition, most pages will have at the top breadcrumb and navigation links to parent and sibling pages throughout the site. These to do’s are high on our list.

About Us:

  1. About the GMD Society: Board, please revise. Do we have a mission statement? A standard blurb?
  2. Join: Board please revise
  3. Officers: Board, please revise. Need board head shots.
  4. History of the Society: Who will write this for us?
  5. Photo galleries of Society events.
  6. The Privacy statement page is required by some countries, particularly in Europe.
  7. Do we need any additional pages under About Us?

Life:

  1. Life: Caroline LaPlue: MacDonald Mapping Project.
  2. Carolyn, would you like to write a research notice for Orts?
  3. Would we like to ask someone to curate walking tours of the various places? John McNeil?

Letters:

  1. Letters: Baronger Bieger and Jordan Modell: MacDonald Letters Project.
  2. Do you want your project to be embedded in this website?
  3. If so what do you need and how shall we go about it?
  4. Would you like to write a research notice for Orts?

Works:

  1. This section is a bibliography project for MacDonald primary sources. It is intended to grow over time and become not only a beginner’s orientation but also an authoritative resource to support research.
  2. Bibliography pages: Kerry has created a dedicated web page for most MacDonald books, short stories, and essays. As you create pages anywhere on the site, you can link to these bibliography pages if you like. Go to any bibliography page for various editions, with additional information, links to download pdfs, and links to modern editions when available.
  3. Index pages: Index pages link to the bibliography pages by either alphabetical or chronological order. They will soon have lists that match the pop-up menus for the sake of accessibility.
  4. Kerry has added basic info on the bibliography pages from “Bulloch (1925),” which is out of copyright.
  5. Raphael B. Shaberman, George Macdonald: A Bibliographical Study (Winchester, England: St. Pauls Bibliographies, 1990). Does anyone know of Raphael Shaberman’s whereabouts? It would be ideal to add his information to the bibliography pages, if he would be willing to allow us to copy his information to these pages (with attribution).
  6. For an example, see the Adela Cathcart page.
  7. Who is the expert on MacDonald bibliography, and do we want to recruit them? or others? Who might we invite to be the Society bibliographer(s)? (John Flynn)
  8. Would a Board member or Society bibliographer like to write a (signed, attributed) bibliographic essay? This essay might comment on his approach to writing, the different genres he wrote, the cultural and circumstantial contexts for his writing, the relative success he experienced throughout his life and thereafter, the relationships that resulted from the writing or contributed to it, the reliability of modern references (eg Greville, Sadler), etc. Whatever one might wish to discuss. Or these could be separate topics in Orts.
  9. Did Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson write the genre list page? Would whoever wrote it like to revise it in any way now? We want to give attribution to scholarly pages like this.

Resources:

  1. Podcast:
    • Would the Board like to make a new podcast episode?
    • Built using the WordPress plugin Seriously Simple Podcasting.
    • Do you want a different podcast icon?
    • Is the title “More Than Meets the Ear” correct?
    • What do you want for the title and description of the first episode?
    • Note: We will set up an official society email address before we activate the podcast on Apple Podcasts Connect. From there it will go to Spotify and everywhere.
  2. North Wind: Will the Board write a description?
  3. Videos: Will the Board please identify GMD videos, podcasts, and audios not on our own YouTube channel that we want to link to from this page?
  4. Journals: What journals do we want to link to? Would the Board like to write a short description of each?
  5. Libraries and Collections: What libraries and collections do we want to link to? Would the Board like to write a short description of each, or perhaps a short introduction to this page?
  6. References for MacDonald’s Life and MacDonald’s Works: Any feedback on these? The 1924 Greville bio and the 1906 Johnson bio are both flawed, but they are out of copyright and we can provide access to them, perhaps with an introductory page by a Board member that indicates their strengths and weaknesses, and suggests sources that reflect more recent scholarship? Or this might addressed in the general bibliographic essay?

Get Involved:

  • Join
  • Student Activities and Opportunities
  • Community Connections
  • Do we want additional pages here? Or split “Community Connections” into several pages?

Orts:

  1. The Orts newsletter becomes a blog with various categories. We can make categories for: News and Events; New Publications; Reviews; Research Notices, etc. Click in the Orts menu (top) to go to the posts for any given category.
  2. The most recent posts appear on the home page (regardless of category).
  3. A default image is displayed when no photo is provided.
  4. Want to write a review? It would be great if we have at least one example for each category before we go public.
  5. What content from the current website do we want to bring over, and what content will be left behind? Do any pages there belong in Orts? Or attached to bibliography pages here? Do we have citations to sources for them, and can we verify that they are accurate transcriptions?

Shop:

  • WordPress plugin: WooCommerce.
  • What will be purchased on this website? We want to keep our non-profit status.

Membership.

  • Items from Winged Lion or Works of MacDonald?
  • Barbara Amell’s Wingfold quarterly?
  • Do we need to talk with Bob Trexler and Jess Lederman?

Update: questions and comments from the Board (that were sent to the whole group):

From: Mike Partridge
Subject: Re: MacDonald Soc. Website Meeting
Date: August 20, 2026 at 5:40:16 AM CDT

Firstly, thank you to Caroline and Kerry for the considerable work and thought that have already gone into this. There is much here to build on, and I hope the comments below are received in that spirit. I would be very happy to help with further work where useful.

My main concern is the user experience. A website should make it easy for someone who knows what they want to find it quickly; where possible, fewer clicks and clearer labels are usually better. With that in mind:

Header image. Am I right in thinking that this is from the Yale conference rather than a Society event in 2024? If so, might that be a little confusing? The image sets the tone of the whole site, so it may be worth considering alternatives—perhaps involving MacDonald himself, or asking one of our visually talented members to suggest options.

About Us. This appears to be the Society’s main introductory area, so I wonder whether MacDonald Society would be a clearer heading. It is necessary, but at present feels largely like a set of placeholders.

The Society’s history could sit within an About Us page here.

The list of officers, board members and trustees needs updating. If I am given editing permissions, I can help with this.

Join, Contact Us, and Privacy Policy all belong here; I would place Contact Us near the end of the list.

Life.

  • The MacDonald Mapping Project is visually excellent, but the “Learn More” link did not work smoothly for me on a desktop mouse: it required a double click and led to an empty “coming later” page. This needs testing on mobile as well. It may be better to hold this back until it has content behind it.
  • The Timeline is a good idea. It will need a named person, or small group, responsible for maintaining it, together with some agreed criteria for what belongs on it. Alongside the visual version, a downloadable chronological list of publications and key events might be useful.
  • Places, Contemporaries, and Letters are all currently marked as coming later. These may be valuable future sections, but their current status strengthens the case for a more limited initial launch.
  • For Discrepancies, Barbara Amell seems an obvious person to consult, with appropriate acknowledgement.

Works. This is clearly an area in which Caroline has already done a great deal of valuable work. It is one of the strongest parts of the site.

Resources. For libraries and collections, it would be useful to link to each institution’s website and add a short note on its principal MacDonald holdings. There may also be omissions: Manchester Central Library, for example, holds the manuscript of St George and St Michael presented by Greville MacDonald.

North Wind. This is an important Society publication and should be given more prominence.

Get Involved. At present this feels like a rather disconnected dropdown list. It might be clearer to distinguish:

  • online connections—Facebook and reading groups; and
  • opportunities for members and others to become more actively involved in the Society.
  • Some of the present material, such as “Community Connections”, seems more like internal thinking than public-facing copy.
  • Orts. The dropdown navigation here is confusing. What is it intended to do? If it is a place for news, discoveries, events and invitations for participation in the wider MacDonald world, a blog or posts page, organised through categories and tags, may be clearer and easier to maintain. If that is its function, it ought perhaps to have more prominence—possibly even from the home page.

Shop. This appears to be carried over from the old site. Is it still relevant? Subject to Bob’s agreement, I would suggest removing it.

A separate practical point concerns the web address. We have available:

  • www.macdonaldsociety.org
  • www.george-macdonald.com

My own preference is for macdonaldsociety.org, which seems the better fit for the Society as it now is; the older address could redirect to it. I would welcome others’ views.

A few final questions seem important before launch:

Has the site been properly tested on mobile devices, particularly the mapping and other more complex visual material?

How can readers report errors, suggest additions, or offer corrections?

Who owns each section of the site and is responsible for keeping it current? There is often a burst of activity at launch, followed by gradual neglect unless responsibility is clear.

Could each page show when it was last updated? That would give readers greater confidence in the material.

The home page still feels rather like a construction site. My preference would be for something sharper and cleaner, with fewer visible placeholders.

Amanda indicated that the purpose of the meeting is to decide whether to go live. My feeling is that the site has very promising foundations, but is not quite ready for a full public launch. It may be better to agree a short list of essential pre-launch changes, complete those, and then go live with confidence rather than with too many unfinished sections visible.

There may be further points, but I think that is enough for now.

Mike

Mike Partridge
Reimagine.co.uk