Customer Reviews

More to William Morris: Two Books that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien-The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains

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The House of Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains, published together in one volume, by William Morris.

I enjoy Morris's work very much. The style is high, archaic, and, to my taste, very beautiful. So I am grateful that Inkling Books is once again making his works available. If I were rating the story alone, I would have given it 5 stars.

What is extremely disappointing, however, is that this edition (that contains both the House of Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains) is almost torture to read due to the formatting. I have to strain to read the text. The type is a thin 9 pt font, which frequently goes into an even thinner italics. The pages are two columns, and the margins are small. Each page is a large 9.5 in height, and 7.5 in width. The net effect is that the open book looks more like a forbidding text book with tiny type than it does a work of enjoyable literature.

The terrible format has taken away the pleasure I am sure I could have had reading these stories. I recommend people look to purchase these works of Morris in separate editions, both of which Inkling Books does in fact offer (which I am led to hope, from the higher page numbers per story, are more felicitously formatted). I also think Inklings Books should make known the (unfortunate) nature of the formatting of the text in their advertisement of this one volume edition. Personally, I'd take it off the market altogether so that poor fools like myself would not accidentally purchase it over the more standardly formatted, and hence readable, editions.

Thousands of modern day fantasy authors are inspired by the works of J.R.R Tolkien - but who inspired Tolkien? "More to William Morris: Two Books That Inspired J.R.R. Tolkien" looks at the author who Tolkien himself credited with the majority of his inspiration for the iconic 'The Lord of the Rings' saga. Offering two of Morris's works in 'The House of the Wolflings' and the 'The Roots of the Mountains', "More to William Morris: Two Books that Inspired J.R.R. Tolkien" is a treasure for any Tolkien fanatic who wants to learn more of the roots of their beloved author and for community library literary collections. Also for Tolkien fans from Inkling Press is Michael W. Perry's "Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings" (1587420198, $17.95) - focusing on the complete history of the Rings Saga.