The Wood Beyond the World

The Wood Beyond the World is a fantasy novel by the English writer William Morris, first published by his own Kelmscott Press in 1894. Morris is often described as the first modern fantasy writer to unite an invented world with the supernatural, and the book is treated as a forerunner of much of the fantasy written since.

Golden Walter's wife betrays him with another man, and rather than remain at home for the feud that would follow with her family he leaves on a trading voyage. His attempt to avoid trouble comes to nothing, because word reaches him while he is away that his wife's clan has killed his father.

He then has a vision of three figures: a stately Lady, her Maid, who wears an iron ring on her ankle, and a Dwarf in a yellow hood. The three of them pass through the port where he is docked, and he sets sail after them. Shortly into the voyage a storm waylays his ship, and he puts in at an unknown country whose only apparent inhabitant is an old hermit.

While he and his companions are hunting for food, Walter strays northward up a steep path, and after several days of travel he rests in a wood, where he is woken by the Dwarf from his vision. The book's place in the history of fantasy was recognised much later, when it was reprinted in 1969 as an early volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.