George MacDonald 
Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood 

The story of a young minister and his flock—first in the Scottish author’s Marshmallows Trilogy including The Seaboard Parish and The Vicar’s Daughter.     Mac Donald’s first major English novel, published in 1867, was set in the village of Arundel on the downs south of London near the south channel coast. It was the site of Mac Donald’s first and only pastorate as a newly married minister in 1851-53. This book is wonderfully descriptive of the region, with autobiographical hints of Mac Donald’s outlook as a young pastor. Chronicling the daily life of one of Mac Donald’s fictionalized “ideal ministers”—perhaps a portrayal of the shepherd-pastor Mac Donald had himself hoped to be—the Annals proved one of his most popular novels.   First released in the Sunday Magazine,  which was intended for “Sabbath reading, ” Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood was quickly published in numerous book editions and contributed in a significant way to Mac Donald’s growing popularity in America. Though less spine-riveting of plot, the three volumes of the Marshmallows Trilogy spawned by Annals provide some of Mac Donald’s most homiletic and deeply spiritual writings.