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The Sundering Flood
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
238 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1897
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509 people want to read
About the author
William Morris
1,690 books496 followersWilliam Morris was an English architect, furniture and textile designer, artist, writer, socialist and Marxist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball and the utopian News from Nowhere. He was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with the movement over goals and methods by the end of that decade. He devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 3, 2015
At about the 2/3 mark I started to reconsider what this was about. It is clearly in the vein of a chivalrous romance, its events and adventures unspooling as though from a storyteller's tongue, all sort of strung together and barely contained by the basic frame of Osberne's courtly romance with Elfhild and his long and undirected quest to regain her.
But eventually the tale reaches the siege and battle for the City of the Sundering Flood, which despite the author's affectedly archaic language turns out to be a masterpiece of efficient storytelling: the battle actions, the factions, the politics, and its resolution. It is not medieval fantasy as I have (inexpertly) thought of it.
Further, soon afterward the perspective flips and Elfhild's story is told in flashback. Where Osberne had joined the forces of the Knight of Longshaw, Elfhild falls in with a member of the Barons' League, who are the other side in this conflict. This is never quite a full alternate viewpoint--the reader's sympathies are clearly with Longshaw--but is such an interesting device that one can only wonder what Morris could have wrought of this hurried and somewhat crash-landing ending if he had the proper time for it, rather than being forced to dictate the draft on his deathbed.
But eventually the tale reaches the siege and battle for the City of the Sundering Flood, which despite the author's affectedly archaic language turns out to be a masterpiece of efficient storytelling: the battle actions, the factions, the politics, and its resolution. It is not medieval fantasy as I have (inexpertly) thought of it.
Further, soon afterward the perspective flips and Elfhild's story is told in flashback. Where Osberne had joined the forces of the Knight of Longshaw, Elfhild falls in with a member of the Barons' League, who are the other side in this conflict. This is never quite a full alternate viewpoint--the reader's sympathies are clearly with Longshaw--but is such an interesting device that one can only wonder what Morris could have wrought of this hurried and somewhat crash-landing ending if he had the proper time for it, rather than being forced to dictate the draft on his deathbed.
September 1, 2025
4.5
Morris clearly improves from his first to this, his last novel. The Sundering Flood is a fantastic romance in the spirit of its medieval ancestor. It is a great story.
Morris clearly improves from his first to this, his last novel. The Sundering Flood is a fantastic romance in the spirit of its medieval ancestor. It is a great story.
November 26, 2024
I didn’t know The Sundering Flood has a map before reading it. According to the info which I have found that this book may be the first pioneer book in fantasy genre that has a map. Not like Tolkien’s middle earth map, but the map is still accessible to the reading experience.
The Sundering Flood is the finale book was written by Morris; he has left the unfinished draft of the book and was passed. His wife edited the story and finished the unfinished part of the story.
The story is focus on Osberne Wulfgrimsson and Elfhild‘s relationship and introduces the sundering flood world. The plot is slow but it is not the main issues to me; each chapters seem to explain when, where and how the characters Osberne Wulfgrimsson and Elfhild move from A to B, B to C. Not seen much results of why it is interesting to follow the story to a reader, it reads like a historical fiction which set in a fantasy esque world. The boy Osberne Wulfgrimsson and the girl Elfhild met and developed their relationship for a while and Osberne was left to be a man in the battle. When he returned, his lover was missed in the raid from the outsiders. And he was searching for her and finally both were met again and happy ending. The setting is interesting but the potential of the setting became the extra backdrops to the story. It is irrelevant to the development of the story. If you omit magic elements from the book it doesn’t change anything. ( except the magic the maiden had which is for the plot)
6 out of 10. This book has some interesting setting but not be fully developed to a good story.
The Sundering Flood is the finale book was written by Morris; he has left the unfinished draft of the book and was passed. His wife edited the story and finished the unfinished part of the story.
The story is focus on Osberne Wulfgrimsson and Elfhild‘s relationship and introduces the sundering flood world. The plot is slow but it is not the main issues to me; each chapters seem to explain when, where and how the characters Osberne Wulfgrimsson and Elfhild move from A to B, B to C. Not seen much results of why it is interesting to follow the story to a reader, it reads like a historical fiction which set in a fantasy esque world. The boy Osberne Wulfgrimsson and the girl Elfhild met and developed their relationship for a while and Osberne was left to be a man in the battle. When he returned, his lover was missed in the raid from the outsiders. And he was searching for her and finally both were met again and happy ending. The setting is interesting but the potential of the setting became the extra backdrops to the story. It is irrelevant to the development of the story. If you omit magic elements from the book it doesn’t change anything. ( except the magic the maiden had which is for the plot)
6 out of 10. This book has some interesting setting but not be fully developed to a good story.
March 9, 2017
The last of Morris's fantasies is definitely the one I like best. It starts off on the banks of the eponymous mighty river, where a young girl and boy meet, but separated by the waters of the Sundering Flood. The boy becomes a mighty youth with the help of magic; the girl becomes pretty. Adventures follow. This worked for me, but it did bog down in some of the adventures--after the supernatural elements and the colorful setting of the beginning, we're back to standard knightly stuff.
October 7, 2025
”Sooth to say, the Maiden had a love, a fair youth and a stalwarth, and a glorious man, and many were the words they had spoken together, but never had her hand touched his hand, nor his lips her lips ; because betwixt these two was a river such as are few upon the earth, unbridged, unfordable, unferryable.”
✨
”Now blossometh bliss in the howes of the old, at our tale growing green from their tale that is told.”
✨
”Now blossometh bliss in the howes of the old, at our tale growing green from their tale that is told.”
April 24, 2019
This is more of a bibliographic note than a review. There are a number of editions offered on-line, notably at The Internet Archive (archive.org), and someone looking for a (free) copy there may find this information helpful. I also identify a free Kindle book. There are some minor editorial problems with the text of this posthumously-published, not-quite-finished, work, to which I will return.
I will say that this is one of my two favorites among Morris' fantasy romances from the last decade of the nineteenth century, along with "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" -- in which "Water" means the lake in which there are islands, just "Flood" in the present book means a river.
I seem to be something of a heretic among Morris fans in not preferring the much, much, longer "The Well at the World's End." As another reviewer has pointed out, "Sundering Flood" owes something to the style and setting of the Icelandic sagas which Morris co-translated, and less to medieval romances, although I think both are (unintentionally?) subordinated to the nineteenth-century novel as a model of storytelling.
The work was originally published in a (very nice) limited edition in November 1897 (according to some sources, actually 1898), from the author's Kelmscott Press, with a popular edition in February 1898 from Longmans, Green & Co., reprinted in January 1910, and in two volumes in Longman's Pocket Library in February 1914: this according to the information in his "Collected Works."
The 1897 text was used by Dover Books in 2017 for a likewise very nice facsimile, complete with the Kelmscott ornamental letters, also available as a Kindle book. (Dover also offers the Kelmscott edition of another Morris romance, "The Wood Beyond the World," and an understandingly expensive reproduction of the beautiful Kelmscott Chaucer, and some other material from Morris' contributions to art and design, as well as an early biography.)
The 1897 text, or one of its reprints, may also be behind some of the other versions available: e.g., the CreateSpace (which does not have a great reputation for accurately reproducing texts) claims to follow the 1897 text.
The Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition of 1973, pictured here (or at least where I am posting this) with its attractive Gervasio Gallardo cover, used none of these texts, but rather Volume XXI of "The Collected Works of William Morris," edited by his daughter, May Morris. She added some unpublished late verse in her Introduction, and a set of "Unfinished Romances" in prose and verse, as a sort of appendix.
She had seen the book through its original printing, but for this edition, published in December 1914 in another limited edition, she made some editorial changes. Using this corrected text for the Ballantine base text was a good editorial decision (but Lin Carter, the series editor, did not mention it in his Introduction).
This corrected text was also used for the Project Gutenberg transcription, which omits the Introduction, and the unfinished stories, and mentions, but does not include, the accompanying map. This is available as a free Kindle book, and may (or may not) have been used for other online versions. https://www.amazon.com/Sundering-Floo...
The corrected 1914 edition and the various Longmans, Green printings, plus the Ballantine paperback, are, as noted above, available from archive.org (The Internet Archive), preferably as a PDF, with plain or with "text," i.e., searchable, at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet..... It is also in the Archive as one of the volumes headed "The Collected Works of William Morris Th," which is harder to identify, and probably not worth the (unnecessary) extra effort. For an almost full set of copies, including the other editions, see https://archive.org/details/texts?and... (Note that this page also includes another, different volume from the Collected Works, in addition to the correct ones.) The Kelmscott Press edition does not appear to be available there.
For the "Collected Works," May Morris went back to the manuscript, changed the readings of some obscure words where her father's handwriting (or intention) was confusing (e.g., "Skimmers" versus "Skinners"), and bracketed material not in the manuscript, but necessary to fill a gap in the story, based on conversations with her father about the book in progress, and sometimes just to fill out a sentence that certainly would have been corrected on revision. She did not systematically root out all of the inconsistencies of what was an almost-complete first draft, such as the color of the heroine's hair.
The result does not differ drastically from the first edition, but may be closer to what the author wanted: and helps to distinguish William Morris' actual writing from his daughter's patches, for those who are interested in such things.
I will say that this is one of my two favorites among Morris' fantasy romances from the last decade of the nineteenth century, along with "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" -- in which "Water" means the lake in which there are islands, just "Flood" in the present book means a river.
I seem to be something of a heretic among Morris fans in not preferring the much, much, longer "The Well at the World's End." As another reviewer has pointed out, "Sundering Flood" owes something to the style and setting of the Icelandic sagas which Morris co-translated, and less to medieval romances, although I think both are (unintentionally?) subordinated to the nineteenth-century novel as a model of storytelling.
The work was originally published in a (very nice) limited edition in November 1897 (according to some sources, actually 1898), from the author's Kelmscott Press, with a popular edition in February 1898 from Longmans, Green & Co., reprinted in January 1910, and in two volumes in Longman's Pocket Library in February 1914: this according to the information in his "Collected Works."
The 1897 text was used by Dover Books in 2017 for a likewise very nice facsimile, complete with the Kelmscott ornamental letters, also available as a Kindle book. (Dover also offers the Kelmscott edition of another Morris romance, "The Wood Beyond the World," and an understandingly expensive reproduction of the beautiful Kelmscott Chaucer, and some other material from Morris' contributions to art and design, as well as an early biography.)
The 1897 text, or one of its reprints, may also be behind some of the other versions available: e.g., the CreateSpace (which does not have a great reputation for accurately reproducing texts) claims to follow the 1897 text.
The Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition of 1973, pictured here (or at least where I am posting this) with its attractive Gervasio Gallardo cover, used none of these texts, but rather Volume XXI of "The Collected Works of William Morris," edited by his daughter, May Morris. She added some unpublished late verse in her Introduction, and a set of "Unfinished Romances" in prose and verse, as a sort of appendix.
She had seen the book through its original printing, but for this edition, published in December 1914 in another limited edition, she made some editorial changes. Using this corrected text for the Ballantine base text was a good editorial decision (but Lin Carter, the series editor, did not mention it in his Introduction).
This corrected text was also used for the Project Gutenberg transcription, which omits the Introduction, and the unfinished stories, and mentions, but does not include, the accompanying map. This is available as a free Kindle book, and may (or may not) have been used for other online versions. https://www.amazon.com/Sundering-Floo...
The corrected 1914 edition and the various Longmans, Green printings, plus the Ballantine paperback, are, as noted above, available from archive.org (The Internet Archive), preferably as a PDF, with plain or with "text," i.e., searchable, at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet..... It is also in the Archive as one of the volumes headed "The Collected Works of William Morris Th," which is harder to identify, and probably not worth the (unnecessary) extra effort. For an almost full set of copies, including the other editions, see https://archive.org/details/texts?and... (Note that this page also includes another, different volume from the Collected Works, in addition to the correct ones.) The Kelmscott Press edition does not appear to be available there.
For the "Collected Works," May Morris went back to the manuscript, changed the readings of some obscure words where her father's handwriting (or intention) was confusing (e.g., "Skimmers" versus "Skinners"), and bracketed material not in the manuscript, but necessary to fill a gap in the story, based on conversations with her father about the book in progress, and sometimes just to fill out a sentence that certainly would have been corrected on revision. She did not systematically root out all of the inconsistencies of what was an almost-complete first draft, such as the color of the heroine's hair.
The result does not differ drastically from the first edition, but may be closer to what the author wanted: and helps to distinguish William Morris' actual writing from his daughter's patches, for those who are interested in such things.
February 19, 2022
Osberne of Wethermel and Elfhild sundered by the flood at the Bight of the Cloven Knoll. Steelhead.
January 15, 2024
Fun little old time fantasy book.
June 27, 2024
My full video review of The Sundering Flood can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTFTc...
February 20, 2012
This has probably been my favorite of William Morris’s books that I’ve read. I was thoroughly pleased with the plot, the characters, the sense of setting both geographically and within history, and was delighted by the way in which the mystical or supernatural was gently weaved into the story without being a central focus. I’m sure that I’ll read this book again, and the next time I promise to write the review closer to when I actually read the book.
December 17, 2012
I really enjoyed parts of this book but on the whole I didn't enjoy it as much as the other book by Morris I've read recently. I think the difference was this one was much more about knights and bandits and much less about magic. I did enjoy the romance, but found it rather hard going in places. Still quite enjoyable though and I definitely want to read the rest of the romance that Morris wrote.
January 7, 2014
No, I'm not into romance books! But this tale by Morris is fitting for the Pre-Raphaelites who probably loved it while sitting by a stream with their lovlies...
A beautiful tale of love and separation and how things come around again. Most of all I loved the words, the use of words to create beautiful English sentences. It is rare today. I like modern lingo but this is refreshing to read.
A beautiful tale of love and separation and how things come around again. Most of all I loved the words, the use of words to create beautiful English sentences. It is rare today. I like modern lingo but this is refreshing to read.
Read
November 9, 2017Dictated while on his death bed, this is Morris' last novel. It was edited posthumously by his daughter May. Separated lovers, a tyrannical king, a magical sword, invading forces, a wise woman skilled in magical arts and perilous adventures fill out this tale in which, like all of his fantasy, Morris tried to revive the tradition of chivalrous romance and did so with multiple plot threads and relatively archaic language. Not remembered; scheduled for re-reading.
Read
October 9, 2017DNF at ~20%. An enjoyable story, but I found the language too challenging to really get into, and the pace too slow to sustain my interest.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews