The House of the Wolfings

Tolkien was influenced by William Morris’ The House of Wolfings’. Mirkwood could be Den Bosh. Morris was a member of the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood, who may have been working on a Utopian Society. Consider the Swan Brotherhood, and Guilds of Basel Switzerland.

Jon Presco

The House of the Wolfings
•By chapter
•In one big page
Introduction
The House of the Wolfings was first published in 1890; like several of Morris’s other novels it went through a period of fashionability between then and the late Edwardian period — even being used as a set text for schools — before disappearing from view. Now if these novels are known at all it is as ancestors of the modern fantasy novel. But Morris’s original intention was much wider than this.

The first reaction to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment it brought with it was natural: to see everything mediaeval as romantic – even…