The Princess and the Goblin

1872

MacDonald's 1872 children's novel. Princess Irene lives in a great house on a mountain the goblins have mined from underneath, and finds a great-great-grandmother spinning in an attic no one else can reach. Curdie, a miner's boy, works out what the goblins are digging toward and that their one weakness is their bare feet. Thirty-two chapters; the first of the two Curdie books.