The Earthly Paradise was published in three volumes between 1868 and 1870 (F. S. Ellis, London). The frame narrative describes a band of Norse mariners who, fleeing the Black Death in the fourteenth century, sail west to find the legendary land where death does not exist. After years of wandering they arrive at an island in the western sea inhabited by descendants of Greek colonists. The Norsemen settle on the island and exchange stories with their hosts: each month, one Norse tale and one Greek tale are told, producing twenty-four narratives in verse.
The tales retell myths from both traditions: Norse (the story of the Volsungs, the tale of Dobie), Greek (Cupid and Psyche, Atalanta’s Race, Pygmalion), and a few from other sources (the Arabian Nights, medieval romance). Morris’s retellings are leisurely, sensuous, and melancholy — the framing device (men who sought immortality and failed) casts a shadow of mortality over every tale.
The poem made Morris famous. It sold enormously by Victorian standards and established him as the leading narrative poet of his generation — the successor to Tennyson in public estimation. Critics at the time compared it to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in structure and to Keats in diction. The comparison to Chaucer is apt: both poets use a frame narrative to contain diverse tales, and both are interested in the relationship between storytelling and the awareness of death.
Collecting The Earthly Paradise
First edition (F. S. Ellis, London, 1868–1870): Three volumes, blue cloth.
Market values:
- First edition, three volumes, fine: $500–$1,500
- Very good: $200–$500
- Individual volumes: $50–$200 each