Gloaming Press · The Roots of Fantasy
Phantastes
A Faerie Romance · George MacDonald · 1858
Before Middle-earth. Before Narnia, there was Phantastes, the book a young C. S. Lewis said baptized his imagination. At last, the fountainhead of fantasy in the edition it has always deserved.
+ $9.99 shipping · bound in England, 3–4 weeks
Printed and bound for you when you order, then sent from our binder in England. No AI, ever.
Not yet? Get a note when the next title lands.
Grimshaw’s Spirit of the Night (1879) beneath the imprint’s gold-foil frame.
The book that lit the fire
In 1858 a Scottish minister named George MacDonald did a thing no one had quite dared: he wrote a fairy tale for grown men and women, about a young man who wakes to find his bedroom turning to forest, and walks out into Fairy Land. It was strange, dreamlike, and unlike anything on the shelves.
A boy named C. S. Lewis found a copy on a railway platform and read it in a single night. He later wrote that it was the night his “imagination was baptized.” The line MacDonald drew runs straight through Lewis, through Tolkien, and into every fantasy on your shelf today.
And yet the book that began it all has never worn a binding worthy of its place, only cheap reprints and library paperbacks. That is the thing we mean to set right.
The Edition
Made to be kept
A single, considered hardcover, built to sit on the same shelf as your finest editions rather than below them.
- iA masterwork on the cover, framed in gold foilGrimshaw’s Spirit of the Night printed across the full case, with the frame, title and mark stamped in real gold foil.
- iiSprayed page edgesFairy purple across the fore-edge, seen only when the book is closed.
- iiiCase-bound hardcover, ribbon marker, printed endpapersRigid boards with the painting printed across them, a bound-in ribbon, and endpapers drawn from the art.
- ivAll thirty-three Arthur Hughes plates, restoredThe Pre-Raphaelite illustrations drawn for the 1905 edition, cleaned and reset.
- vPrinted one copy at a timeCream stock, made when you order it, so no run is ever pulped.
The Cover
Front, spine & back
One painting wraps the case. The fairy sits centred on the front, the night carries across the spine, and her moonlit landscape opens out across the back behind the blurb.
Anodos wakes to find the carved leaves of his writing-desk stirring into a living wood, and steps through into Fairy Land. A dreaming, restless masterpiece: the fairy tale for grown readers that lit the imaginations of Lewis and Tolkien.
Cover mockup: back, spine and front (scroll to see the whole case). Grimshaw’s night carries around the boards, with the fairy centred on the front.
From Readers
In readers’ hands
The edition out of the box, on the shelf, and open at the plates.
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★★★★★Honestly blown away by the quality of this copy! The wrap-around cover across the spine looks gorgeous on my shelf, the sprayed edges are clean, and having the original illustrations inside makes it feel like an old heirloom. Worth every penny guys :)
Arya L. -
★★★★★Easily the prettiest book I own now. The gold foil is tasteful and shines in most lighting. Also reading MacDonald’s weird, dreamy fairy tale really makes me appreciate the old fey art on the cover. Well done, would buy more books.
Matt P. -
★★★★★They nailed every single detail here. The panoramic cover art flows seamlessly into the spine which can be hard to do. This means that however you display the book you get some of the art. Also the page edges are stunning, and the print quality on the classic sketches is razor-sharp. You won’t want to put it back on the shelf (until you want to look at it again).
Ethan M.
“That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized.”
C. S. Lewis, on reading PhantastesStep through the door
Your copy is printed and bound the day you order it, then sent to you. Nothing sits in a warehouse, and no run is ever pulped. Binding and the crossing from England take three to four weeks. Worth the wait, we think, for a book made only once you’ve asked for it.
+ $9.99 shipping · bound in England, 3–4 weeks
Not ready for this one?
We’re bringing back the rest of the roots of fantasy: Morris, Dunsany, MacDonald’s Lilith. Leave a word and we’ll tell you when the next one is bound.
Gloaming Press · About
Why this press exists
I started this because the books I loved most deserved better than a photocopy in a paper cover.
I fell for fantasy the way a lot of people do, with a paperback I read so many times it came apart in my hands. The further in I got, the further back I wanted to go. Past the bestsellers, to the strange, older books the great writers grew up on themselves. George MacDonald. William Morris. Lord Dunsany. The roots of the whole tree.
Here is what I kept running into. Those books were either out of print in any decent form, or dumped into grim print-on-demand paperbacks with blurry, lifeless covers. The words that shaped Tolkien and Lewis, dressed like an afterthought. And the “special editions” at the big chains all started to look like the same book wearing different foil.
I didn’t want a Barnes & Noble edition. I wanted the kind of thing an independent person makes because they actually love it. I make music too, as one half of the band STIM, so I think about books the way a band thinks about a record: the good ones get a gatefold and liner notes because someone cared. So that is what this is. A small, independent press, giving the roots of fantasy the editions they always deserved.
There is no AI here. Not on the covers, not in the pages. The cover art is real, painted by real masters, chosen because it belongs with the story, and in the public domain so it can be loved again. The words are the authors’ own. What I add is care. The choosing, the setting, the foil, the paper, the thread. Appreciation of the art, in word and in print.
That is the whole of it. Old books given real art and real craft, made by a person with taste instead of an algorithm.
And if you’re wondering who that person is: every edition is chosen, set and proofed at one desk, under the supervision of three cats, Sunni, Stormi and Laura, and a plush Hedwig who sits on top of my computer and watches everything I do.
Ben Waldee, founder