The Water of the Wondrous Isles was published posthumously by the Kelmscott Press in 1897 (Morris died in October 1896). Birdalone is a young woman raised in captivity by a witch in a cottage beside a vast lake. She escapes in a magical boat (the Dobie) that carries her across the lake to a series of enchanted islands, each presenting a different trial or temptation.
The novel is unique among Morris’s romances in having a female protagonist — and Birdalone is genuinely active rather than decorative. She is brave, resourceful, sexually autonomous (a remarkable quality for 1897), and intellectually curious. The islands function as an education: each one teaches Birdalone something about power, love, desire, or freedom that prepares her for the mainland world where the main narrative unfolds.
The lake-and-islands structure gives the book an episodic quality unlike the linear quests of Morris’s other romances — each island is a self-contained story, connected by the larger narrative of Birdalone’s growth from captive child to free woman. The prose is among Morris’s most lyrical, and the landscape descriptions — the lake’s moods, the islands’ varied ecologies — have a hallucinatory vividness that suggests Morris knew he was writing against time.
Collecting The Water of the Wondrous Isles
Kelmscott Press first edition (1897): Printed in Chaucer type on handmade paper.
Market values:
- Kelmscott Press edition, fine: $5,000–$12,000
- Longmans commercial edition (1897): $200–$500