From the late 1880s to the end of his life in 1896, William Morris produced a remarkable series of eight prose romances set in a medievalesque world. The two earliest,
The House of the Wolfings(1888) and
The Roots of the Mountains(1889), have ties to history; the former recounts the struggles of a fictitious Germanic tribe with Roman invaders, while the latter deals with the Germanic tribes' later difficulties with the invading Huns. Both books include supernatural elements, and offer the imaginative geography now associated with the modern fantasy novel. A later prose romance,
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair(1895), is set in a purely imaginative world lacking any historical basis, but it avoids the supernatural entirely. None of these three books combines the essential…
2357 words
Citation: Boenig, Robert. "The Story of the Glittering Plain". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 December 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7841, accessed 22 November 2024.]
