The Roots of the Mountains

When Morris published this epic tale of great love and heroic battles he intended it as a kind of sequel to The House of the Wolfings, but this novel has far greater scope and depth. The time is later than that of Wolfings, and now the people are faced with enslaving Huns. Here, Morris explores more fully than ever before the roots of desire and consciousness by creating a reality more of the imagination, further removed from the world as we know it. Roots is the last of his romances to have ties with recorded history - bridge into the full-flown adult fantasy novels to follow. Said to have been one of the source materials upon which J. R. R. Tolkien drew when creating his beloved Lord of the Rings series, The Roots of the Mountains is a classic fantasy that takes place on an epic scale. Two civilizations are drawn together by a pair of star-crossed lovers - and by the threat of an encroaching enemy that could destroy the world as they know it. William Morris was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and revolutionary socialist. As a designer, he was associated with the English Arts and Crafts Movement and was a major contributor to the revival of traditional textile arts and methods of production in Britain. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre. He achieved success with the publication of his epic poems and novels, namely The Earthly Paradise, A Dream of John Ball, the utopian News from Nowhere, and the fantasy romance The Well at the World's End.