The Well at the World's End

Written by William Morris

Narrated by LibriVox Community

The Well at the World's End is thought to be one of the first examples of an entirely fictional fantasy world, and has greatly influenced later fantasy writers such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The book follows the travels of Ralph, a prince of a tiny country, as he disobeys his fathers wishes and runs away from home to adventure in the world, and seek out the fabled Well at World's End, said to grant eternal youth to those who drink from it. (Summary by BumbleVee)

• Language: English
• Publisher: LibriVox
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014

William Morris

William Morris (1834-1896) was an English designer, poet, novelist, and socialist. Born in Walthamstow, Essex, he was raised in a wealthy family alongside nine siblings. Morris studied Classics at Oxford, where he was a member of the influential Birmingham Set. Upon graduating, he married embroiderer Jane Burden and befriended prominent Pre-Raphaelites Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. With Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb, the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, he designed the Red House in Bexleyheath, where he would live with his family from 1859 until moving to London in 1865. As a cofounder of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co., he was one of the Victorian era’s preeminent interior decorators and designers specializing in tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, stained glass, and furniture. Morris also found success as a writer with such works as The Earthly Paradise (1870), News from Nowhere (1890), and The Well at the World’s End (1896). A cofounder of the Socialist League, he was a committed revolutionary socialist who played a major part in the growing acceptance of Marxism and anarchism in English society.