In the highly charged and symbolic father-son relationships of his novels and the maternal divinities of his fairy tales, MacDonald worked out his complex feelings of mixed gratitude and resentment toward his father and his yearning for his mother. The impressions of a boy growing up in a small Scottish village formed the background of his most successful novels, where his ability to recreate the character, landscape, and folklore of his native land made a unique contribution to Scottish literature.
At fifteen, MacDonald left his native Huntly in West Aberdeenshire to attend King's College, Aberdeen. Though he excelled in chemistry and natural philosophy, it was the literature of German romanticism that made the most abiding impression upon him. The short, tragic life of Novalis had a morbid fascination for the similarly delicate young MacDonald. In 1845 MacDonald received a master's degree and became a private tutor in London, where he met his future wife, Louisa Powell, his cousin's sister-in-law. He enrolled in the Independent theological college at Highbury in 1848, but before he completed his training, he was ordained at Trinity Congregational Church, Arundel. On the strength of this appointment, he married in 1851. Soon, however, the unorthodox theology of this youthful mystic alarmed the prosaic congregation.
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