The Folk of the Mountain Door: A Victorian-Era Pagan Fantasy

This book explores William Morris’s profound influence on fantasy fiction. His innovative novels, particularly The House of the Wolfings (1888) and The Roots of the Mountains (1889), directly influenced J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). Morris also created an unfinished work, The Folk of the Mountain Door, which presents a pagan fantasy where the benevolent gods Odin and Frigg relay prophecy to an aging king about a dying world. This unique edition includes obscure material from Morris’s inspiration, original commentary, and his horror retelling of a Danish folktale, Lindenborg Pool.