What You Need to Know About The Princess And The Goblin Cat Curtain
The Princess and the Goblin is a novel by George MacDonald published in 1872. The "cat curtain" reference most people run into online usually comes from discussions about the famous illustration plates by Arthur Rackham, where one of the Goblin scenes features cats near a curtained window. Some readers also bring up later adaptations or fan art that play with those curtain imagery ideas. I want to clear up what actually exists here before anyone wastes money on something that isn't what they expect. The original book tells the story of Princess Irene, who can see goblins that others cannot because she is blessed with a special spiritual sight. The goblins live underground and plan to capture her. The cat curtain moment most people talk about is not a major plot point in the book itself. It appears in Rackham's illustrations and has been referenced heavily in modern visual retellings. If you are looking for the actual text, there is a scene where goblins are described in relation to domestic spaces, and cats appear as animals that can sense things humans miss. That is the closest thing to a "cat curtain" moment in the primary source. I spent a lot of time tracking down what people are actually searching for when they type this phrase. Most of the results are Pinterest boards, fan art, or Etsy listings for curtain tiebacks shaped like cats with goblin references. None of that is connected to George MacDonald's work. The only legitimate connection is through Rackham's illustrations, which are public domain in most countries but still protected in some jurisdictions depending on the specific edition.
If you want the actual book, it is widely available for free through Project Gutenberg and other public domain archives. The full text is there with no paywall. I downloaded it myself a while back when someone in a forum asked about goblin depiction accuracy and wanted to verify whether the cat scenes were in the original or added later by illustrators.
Where to Get the Book and Related Materials
Project Gutenberg offers the complete text of The Princess and the Goblin at gutenberg.org. The eBook comes in multiple formats: HTML, Kindle, plain text, and ePub. The file sizes range from about 50KB for plain text to roughly 2MB for the HTML version with illustration links. Downloading takes maybe ten seconds on a normal connection. For the Rackham illustrations, the situation is messier. Many scan versions exist on archive.org, but the copyright status of Rackham's artwork itself is complicated. He died in 1939, so in the European Union his illustrations are still under copyright until 2059. In the United States, they entered the public domain in 2035 because they were published before 1930 and copyright was renewed. I learned this the hard way when I tried to use a Rackham plate in a presentation and nearly got a takedown notice before I verified the jurisdiction rules. There are also modern reprint editions from publishers like Dover and Puffin. Those are worth buying if you want a physical copy with the original illustrations included, since the Project Gutenberg version sometimes drops the plates or only includes them as broken image links. A Dover paperback runs around ten dollars and holds up well enough for normal reading.
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Common Confusion and What People Actually Want
When I see this search term come up, usually one of three things is happening. Someone found a piece of art online that they think is from the book and wants to identify it. Someone wants to make a curtain or room decor themed around the story and is looking for source material. Someone is writing a paper or article and needs clarification on whether the cat and curtain imagery is canonical to MacDonald's text. The third case is the one where I found myself most useful. A graduate student contacted me after I posted about goblin symbolism in Victorian children's literature. She was trying to distinguish between what MacDonald wrote and what later illustrators added, because her thesis depended on making that separation. The cat scenes and the domestic interior descriptions with curtains were mostly Rackham's additions or emphasis, not MacDonald's focus. That distinction changed how she framed her entire argument. The key insight most people miss is that The Princess and the Goblin is far more focused on the goblin biology and the spiritual warfare themes than on any domestic or animal symbolism. The cats in the story serve as sensory markers. They react to goblin presence before humans do. That is a functional narrative device, not decorative whimsy. When Rackham illustrated it, he leaned into the atmospheric domestic scenes, which is why the curtain and cat imagery feels more prominent in visual retellings than in the actual prose.
How to Use This Material Without Making Mistakes
If you are citing the book in any academic or semi-serious context, always specify which edition you are using and which illustrations, if any, you are referencing. The first edition had different plates than the later ones. Different publishers have included different combinations. I once wrote a review that quoted a passage and assumed a specific illustration was in every edition. It was not. A reader pointed out that their copy had completely different artwork for that scene, and I had to go back and correct the post. It was an embarrassment but also a useful lesson in checking edition details before making broad claims. If you are making craft or decor projects inspired by the book, go straight to the public domain text for story elements and be careful about using Rackham's images unless you are in a jurisdiction where they have expired or you are creating transformative work that falls under fair use. The line between inspiration and infringement is thinner than most people think with illustrated classics. I watched someone get a shop suspended on a major craft platform for using unlicensed Rackham plates in product photos. The appeal process took four months and she never got the shop reinstated. The goblins themselves are worth reading about carefully if you plan to adapt anything. MacDonald based them on a theory that goblins are fallen humans whose lineage has degraded over generations until they lose their faces entirely and become more creature than person. That is a much darker and more specific concept than most modern adaptations show. Using a generic scary underground creature design for a Princess and the Goblin project will feel wrong to anyone who has actually read the book.
Alternatives and Related Works Worth Checking
If the original book feels dated or too dense, there are several retellings that simplify the story for younger readers. The Puffin Classics edition keeps most of the original text with edited passages removed for pace. Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote a very different but spiritually adjacent book called The Way of All Flesh that shares MacDonald's theological framework, though it is nowhere near as accessible. John Ruskin's writings on fairy stories also engage directly with MacDonald's approach and provide critical context that helps explain why this book matters in the history of fantasy literature. For the visual side, if you want artistically faithful adaptations, the original Rackham plates are the standard. After that, Pauline Baynes did illustrations for a C.S. Lewis edition of the book, and her style is competent if less distinctive. I would not recommend the abridged audiobook versions that skip the goblin biology passages. Those cuts remove the parts that make the story internally consistent and leave gaps that make Irene's abilities seem unexplained. I have been going through this material for years and it keeps coming up in the same confused ways. The search term blends the book title with imagery from its illustrations and calls it one thing. Knowing what is actually in the text versus what is in the plates versus what is modern fan interpretation saves you a lot of time and prevents mistakes in anything you produce from it.
