Gandalf’s salad days

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In the introduction to The Well at the World’s End (1896) by William Morris, Lin Carter claims that it is the longest fantasy novel published prior to The Lord of the Rings – which may well be true, my Ballantine paperback copy has about 550 pages at 400-500 words per page. Roughly halfway through the book, we are introduced to a character by the name of Gandolf, the semi-tyrannical ruler of the city of Utterbol.

C.S. Lewis, a close friend of JRR Tolkien, was apparently quite obsessed with William Morris, so we can fairly safely assume that Tolkien also read this book.

Now we know what Gandalf did before he became a wizard in Middle Earth……

 

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