Lilith

Lilith: A Romance is a fantasy novel by the Scottish writer George MacDonald, first published in 1895. It was reprinted in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fifth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in September 1969.

The subject is the nature of life, death and salvation. In the story MacDonald describes a cosmic sleep that heals tortured souls and precedes the salvation of all, and he was a Christian universalist who believed that everyone would eventually be saved. The novel nevertheless treats divine punishment seriously, and its salvation is presented as hard-won rather than automatic, which is why it is read as an argument rather than as an allegory with a settled answer.

The protagonist, Mr Vane, owns a library that appears to be haunted by its former librarian, who resembles him closely, and the plot proceeds from his investigation of that figure into another world. The world beyond the library is not explained as a system: the book describes what Vane encounters and lets the argument about salvation carry the meaning rather than stating it in advance. The cosmic sleep that heals tortured souls is offered to him as something he has to walk through and understand.