"The Princess and the Goblin" is a children's fantasy novel by George MacDonald, first published in 1872. The story follows eight-year-old Princess Irene, who lives a lonely life in a castle in a wild, desolate, mountainous kingdom. Unbeknownst to her, the nearby mines are inhabited by a race of goblins, long banished from the kingdom and now anxious to take revenge on their human neighbors. Irene befriends a young miner named Curdie, who overhears the goblins' plans to flood