William Morris

The House of the Wolfings William Morris

The first step toward the characteristic large-scale fantasies which have had such influence on the genre ...is The House of the Wolfings. Here the setting is quasi-historical: a European Saxon community is resisting the decadent advances of late Imperial Rome. The romantic-supernatural story contains a large admixture of verse. Indeed, Morris's chief contribution to the book is his beautiful prose and poetry, for his version of the story is actually a collaboration with Norse scholar Eirikr Magnusson, who provided a literal translation of the original text, which Morris then reset as prose and poetry. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote of its influence on Lord of the Rings that, "The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe ... more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains."The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.