The Water of the Wondrous Isles [SEP] publisher
The Water of the Wondrous Isles
The Water of the Wondrous Isles is a fantasy novel by William Morris, perhaps the first writer of modern fantasy to unite an imaginary world with the element of the supernatural, and thus a precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature. It was first printed in 1897 by Morris' own Kelmscott Press on vellum and artisanal paper in a blackletter type of his own design. For the wider reading public, a hardcover trade edition was published later that year by Longmans, Green and Co.
The House of the Wolfings" and "The Roots of the Mountains" were to some degree historical novels. Like these "The Story of the Glittering Plain" is set in a world similar to the distant past of northern Europe. Morris would go on to develop the new genre established in this work in such later fantasies as "Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair", "The Wood Beyond the World", "The Well at the World's End", and "The Water of the Wondrous Isles".