At any rate, William Morris is one of the more interesting and influential characters of Victorian England.  Repelled by the changes that the Industrial Revolution had brought to Britain, he yearned for more pastoral times.  By profession a Medievalist, he translated Norse sagas and printed them in beautiful editions.  An artist and founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, he designed many of the flowery tapestries and wallpapers that we associate with the Victorian drawing room.  Politically he was a utopian Socialist.  And, as Carter says, as a writer he helped to create the fantasy novel.  In all of these pursuits he harkened back to an idealized past, no where more so than in his writing.

The language, style and story of this novel lend it an aura of antiquity, as if it too was merely a translation of some medieval romance.  The hero of the story, Golden Walter, flees his home upon realizing that his new bride hates him.  Sailing forth on one of his merchant father's ships, his fate becomes intertwined with a mysterious trio: a splendid lady, her evil dwarf servant and a young maiden whom the lady has enslaved.  Walter pursues the trio beyond the reaches of his own world to The Golden House, governed by the lady, known only as The Mistress.  There he will battle the dwarf, free the maiden, with whom he has fallen in love, and together they will flee the Mistress.

Though Morris may have intended to recall a lost past, he truly does create a unique world of his own.  It is a world in which the reader can lose himself for hours and it makes for a wonderful and unusual reading experience.