Lilith: A Romance

Lilith is a fantasy novel by the Scottish writer George MacDonald, first published in 1895. It is considered one of the darkest and most profound of his works, dealing with the nature of life, death and salvation. For decades it remained largely overlooked, but it gained new visibility with Ballantine Books' 1969 paperback reprint in its Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

The protagonist, Mr. Vane, owns a library that seems haunted by its former librarian, who appears as a raven. When he finally confronts the strange Mr. Raven, he learns that the raven knew his father, who had visited a parallel universe and now lives there. Following the raven through a mirror, Vane enters a realm of seven dimensions, where there is a house of beds in which dreamers sleep until the end of the world, a death that is in truth life. His father refused to sleep there and was condemned to fight skeletons in a cursed wood.

Vane's journey takes him through a treacherous valley to the Little Ones, children who never grew up and have become selfish, deformed giants. He resolves to help them and faces Lilith, princess of Bulika, whose beauty nearly blinds him. The story reaches its climax in a painful struggle in which Lilith must surrender the water she holds in a clenched hand before she can join the sleepers in peaceful rest.

The novel draws on Victorian Christian symbolism and the idea of universalism, the belief that all will eventually be saved, though salvation is neither easy nor free of punishment. Critics have been divided: some admire its striking images, while others find it unsettling and its message hard to accept. It is nonetheless regarded as a singular work and a forerunner of modern fantasy.