William Morris, The House of the Wolfings

Robert Boenig (Texas A&M University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1889

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Romance

Resources

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 …

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2346 words

Citation: Boenig, Robert. "The House of the Wolfings". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 February 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=528, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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