William Morris's The Roots of the Mountains (1889) is one of the founding works of modern fantasy — a heroic-age romance from the poet, designer, and revolutionary who, in his last decade, all but invented the genre. It is the direct companion to The House of the Wolfings, continuing the invented tribal world of that earlier book. In the green valley of Burgdale, at the roots of a great mountain range, three kindred peoples — Dalesmen, Woodlanders, and Shepherds — live free and self-governing, ruled by their own assembly and bound by oath and fellowship. Into this settled life comes the young hero Face-of-god, called Gold-mane, betrothed to the woman known as the Bride. Hunting alone in the wild wood he meets the Sun-beam, a mysterious mountain woman, and learns a grim thing: a kindred folk has been driven from its home and enslaved by the Dusky Men, a savage Hunnish horde that has overrun the rich valley of Silverdale, and the same fate threatens the dales. The kindreds of dale, wood, and mountain swear alliance, gather their strength, and march to break the power of the invaders and free the enslaved folk. Woven through the war is a double love story, resolved not in a single marriage but in two peoples bound together in lasting fellowship. Written in Morris's archaic saga-prose threaded with verse, and built around a whole free society rather than a single champion, it is a romance of war, alliance, love, and the defence of a free communal life — and one of the books J. R. R. Tolkien named among the seeds of Middle-earth. This edition presents the complete public-domain text of the 1889 work in clean, readable typesetting prepared for the modern e-reader.
