The Glittering Plain

The Story of the Glittering Plain is an 1891 fantasy novel by William Morris, perhaps the first modern fantasy writer to unite an imaginary world with the element of the supernatural, and thus the precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature. His earlier fantasies The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains were to some degree historical novels. Morris would go on to develop the new genre established in this work in such later fantasies as Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair, The Wood Beyond the World, The Well at the World's End, and The Water of the Wondrous Isles. It is also important for its exploration of the socialist themes that interested Morris.