William Morris, The House of the Wolfings

Robert Boenig (Texas A&M University)
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The House of the Wolfings

was the first of the remarkable prose romances William Morris wrote during the last eight years of his life. It was first published by Reeves & Turner in 1889, though the first thousand copies were released in December of 1888. The romance depicts a violent and ultimately victorious struggle of a tribe of Goths against the invading Romans. Not set in a purely imaginary world, it is strictly an historical novel rather than a fantasy story. It does, however, depict supernatural events; when Morris combined a medievalesque imaginary world with the marvelous, as he did with

The Glittering Plain

(1891), the third of his eight late prose romances, he bequeathed the essential form of the fantasy novel to subsequent writers, notably Tolkien. While Morris was writing

The

2346 words

Citation: Boenig, Robert. "The House of the Wolfings". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 February 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=528, accessed 19 March 2024.]

528 The House of the Wolfings 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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