William Morris
As the youngest son of a king, Ralph of Upmeads is expected to forsake adventure for the safety of home. But the call of the Well at the World’s End is too powerful to resist, and Ralph disobeys his parents in order to seek out his true destiny in its magical waters. The journey is long and arduous as the well lies on the far side of a distant mountain range and the...
The Water of the Wondrous Isles is a landmark in fantasy fiction. First published a year after Morris’s death in 1897 by Kelmscott Press—Morris’s own printing company—the novel follows Birdalone, a young girl who is stolen as a baby by a witch who takes her to serve in the woods of Evilshaw.
After she encounters a wood fairy that helps her escape the witch’s clutches, Birdalone embarks on a series of adventures across the
...News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In the book, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no
...The Roots of the Mountains: Wherein is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale, Their Friends, Their Neighbors, Their Foemen, and Their Fellows in Arms tells the story of the Dalemen, whose lives are disrupted by the Wolfings, and the invading Huns who follow them. Peaceful artisans, the Dalemen live in the Burgdales, a fictitious group of Germanic settlements at the foot of a mountain range. Credited with being an influence on J. R.
...13) Signs of Change
A Dream of John Ball (1888) is a novel by English author William Morris about the English peasants' revolt of 1381 and the rebel John Ball. Like the novels close contemporary - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain - it describes a dream and time travel encounter between the medieval and modern worlds. However unlike Twain's vision of a violent and chaotic "Dark Age", Morris describes a positive image of the Middle Ages,
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