| The Well at the World's End | |
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Covers of The Well at the World's End, vols. 1-2, Ballantine Books, 1970 |
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| Author(s) | William Morris |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | The Kelmscott Press |
| Publication date | 1896 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| ISBN | NA |
The Well at the World's End is a fantasy novel by the British artist, poet, and author William Morris. It was first published in 1896 and has been reprinted a number of times since, most notably in two parts as the twentieth and twenty-first volumes of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in August and September 1970. It is also available in one volume along with a similar Morris tale, The Wood Beyond the World, in On the Lines of Morris' Romances: Two Books that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien.
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Using language with elements of the medieval tales which were his models, Morris tells the story of Ralph of Upmeads, the fourth and youngest son of a minor king, who sets out, contrary to his parents' wishes, to find knightly adventure and seek the Well at the World's End, a magic well which will confer a near-immortality and strengthened destiny on those who drink from it.
Ralph meets a mysterious lady who has drunk from the well, and they become lovers. However, she is killed, and with the help of Ursula, another maiden whom he meets upon the way, Ralph eventually attains the Well.
Although the novel is relatively obscure by today's standards it has had a significant influence on many notable fantasy authors. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien both seem to have found inspiration in The Well at the World's End: ancient tables of stone, a "King Peter", and a quick, white horse named "Silverfax" are only a few.
The Ballantine one-volume paperback edition has what appears to be a quotation from C. S. Lewis on the back cover: "I have been more curious about travels from Upmeads to Utterbol than about those recorded in Hokluyt. The magic in THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END is that it is an image of the truth. If to love story is to love excitement, then I ought to be the greatest lover of excitement alive!" This passage is actually a pastiche of phrases from Lewis' essay "On Stories" (anthologized in several collections, including Of This and Other Worlds, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., Glasgow, 1982: pp. 25–45), and distorts Lewis' original meaning. He does not say that "the magic in the book" is an image of the truth, but that he is "not sure, on second thoughts, that the slow fading of the magic in The Well at the World's End is, after all, a blemish. It is an image of the truth" (p. 45).
As for "excitement," which Lewis defines as "the alternate tension and appeasement of imagined anxiety" (p. 29), his original point is not that he is a great lover of excitement, but that some readers, including himself, seek literary experiences other than excitement in tales: "If to love Story is to love excitement then I ought to be the greatest lover of excitement alive. But the fact is that what is said to be the most 'exciting' novel in the world, The Three Musketeers, makes no appeal to me at all" (p. 29). Lewis is thus explicitly not the "greatest lover of excitement alive."
In an October 1914 letter to his future wife, Tolkien told her, "Amongst other work I am trying to turn one of the short stories [of the Finnish Kalevala] ... into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris's romances with chunks of poetry in between."
The same title was used by Scottish writer Neil Gunn for his 1948 book.
The copyright for this story has expired in the United States, and thus now resides in the public domain. The text is available via Project Gutenberg.