1877 [1876] The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

Description

First Edition, Publishers' Original Binding

The first edition of this epic poem from British textile designer, writer, and artist William Morris. While the title page is dated 1877, as called for, the work was actually first published in 1876. In the scarce publisher's original cloth binding.

Composed of over 10,000 lines, Morris recounts the tale of Norse hero Sigmund, his son Sigurd, and Sigurd's wife Gudrun, drawn from the  Icelandic Volsunga Saga and Elder Edda. Having encountered the tale at a young age, Morris began to learn Old Norse from an Icelandic scholar in 1868, and embarked on his own translations of the Icelandic classics.

It was Morris's own favourite of his poems, and was enthusiastically praised both by contemporary critics and by figures including T. E. Lawrence and George Bernard Shaw, and is viewed as having influenced the work of J. R. R. Tolkien and Andrew Lang.