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Title: The Story of Sigurd the Volsung

Author: William Morris

Release Date: September 17, 2004 [eBook #13486]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE STORY OF SIGURD THE VOLSUNG

Written In Verse By

WILLIAM MORRIS

With Portions Condensed Into Prose by Winifred Turner, B.A.
Late Assistant Mistress, Ware Grammar School For Girls
And
Helen Scott, M.A.

1922

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

By J. W. Mackail

William Morris, one of the most eminent imaginative writers of the
Victorian age, differs from most other poets and men of letters in
two ways--first, he did great work in many other things as well as in
literature; secondly, he had beliefs of his own about the meaning and
conduct of life, about all that men think and do and make, very
different from those of ordinary people, and he carried out these
views in his writings as well as in all the other work he did
throughout his life.

He was born in 1834. His father, a member of a business firm in the
City of London, was a wealthy man and lived in Essex, in a country
house with large gardens and fields belonging to it, on the edge of
Epping Forest. Until the age of thirteen Morris was at home among a
large family of brothers and sisters. He delighted in the country
life and especially in the Forest, which is one of the most romantic
parts of England, and which he made the scene of many real and
imaginary adventures. From fourteen to eighteen he was at school at
Marlborough among the Wiltshire downs, in a country full of beauty and
history, and close to another of the ancient forests of England, that
of Savernake. He proceeded from school to Exeter College, Oxford,
where he soon formed a close friendship with a remarkable set of young
men of his own age; chief among these, and Morris's closest friend for
the rest of his life, was Edward Burne-Jones, the painter. Study of