The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems was published by Bell and Daldy in 1858. Morris was twenty-four — a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, recently married to Jane Burden, and dividing his energy between painting, architecture, and poetry. The collection is the literary equivalent of Pre-Raphaelite painting: intensely colored, medieval in subject, sensuous in detail, and morally ambiguous.
The title poem gives Queen Guenevere a voice: brought before her judges for adultery with Lancelot, she does not deny the charge but transforms her defence into a celebration of passion, beauty, and the refusal to live by rules made by men who have never loved. The poem’s power lies in its dramatic monologue form — we hear Guenevere’s voice, feel her rage and pride, and are seduced by her argument even as we recognize its logical weakness.
The other poems divide between Arthurian pieces and poems drawn from Froissart’s chronicles of the Hundred Years’ War. The Froissart poems (“Sir Peter Harpdon’s End,” “The Haystack in the Floods”) are remarkable for their violence — they describe medieval warfare without romanticization, blood and desperation rendered with hallucinatory precision.
The collection was not a commercial success — it sold poorly and received hostile reviews — but it established Morris’s literary identity and introduced themes (the Middle Ages, the defense of passion against convention, the beauty of handcraft) that would occupy him for the rest of his life.
Collecting The Defence of Guenevere
First edition (Bell and Daldy, London, 1858): Dark blue cloth.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $1,000–$3,000
- Very good: $400–$1,000