Well at the World’s End

The Salisbury House Library Collection features 14 titles from William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, one of the most influential presses of the arts and craft movement. Well at the World’s End is one of the press’s most famous works authored by Morris. The high fantasy novel draws from myth and was influential for the future of fantasy writing and inspiring authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

William Morris established Kelmscott Press in the 1890s to create beautifully crafted books. Inspired by the aesthetics and quality of medieval and Renaissance European books, many Kelmscott works were created on handmade paper with bespoke type and decoration applied by a handpress. This edition of Well at the World’s End is bound in limp vellum with green silk ties to imitate a historical book structure.

Other Kelmscott Press titles in the SHLC:

• Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (The Kelmscott Chaucer) – 1896
• The Order of Chivalry – 1893
• The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris – 1894
• A Dream of John Ball by William Morris – 1892
• Poems by John Keats – 1894
• The History of Reynard the Foxe translated by William Caxton – 1892
• Utopia by Thomas More with a foreword by William Morris – 1893
• News from Nowhere by William Morris – copies from 1891 and 1892 (one was previously owned by English novelist Thomas Hardy)