Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood

The 19th-century novel of a boy coming of age in the Scottish Highlands—from the Victorian-era author of The Princess and the Goblin.

Released in 1871 after At the Back of the North Wind, MacDonald’s first realistic “young readers” novel follows the boyhood adventures of Ranald Bannerman up to the moment in his teens when he realizes that he is “not a man.” Thus begins his growth into true manhood. MacDonald’s editorship of the highly popular magazine Good Words for the Young in the late 1860s and early 1870s resulted in five young-reader stories, starting with At the Back of the North Wind, and continuing with Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood and The Princess and the Goblin in succession. Set in and around MacDonald’s Scottish hometown of Huntly, many of young Ranald’s escapades, as in most of MacDonald’s Scots stories, are autobiographical. Ranald Bannerman fictionally presents the lighter, occasionally mischievous, side of MacDonald’s boyhood.