KELMSCOTT PRESS. MORRIS, William. ~ The Water of the Wondrous Isles.
One of 250 copies on paper, (a further 6 copies printed on vellum). Six woodcut borders, three-quarter and half borders, marginal ornaments and 6 initial words designed by William Morris, except for two initial words ‘Whilom’ and ‘Empty’ which were completed from his unfinished designs by Catterson-Smith, nearly 1500 three- and six-line initials, all by William Morris, engraved on wood by W.H. Hooper et al, the initial letters then being electroplated, woodcut press device on colophon, leaf paragraph marks. Printed in two columns in red and black in Chaucer type on hand-made Batchelor Flower paper. Large 4to., original limp vellum with silk ties, spine lettered in gilt in Golden type. A few marks to the vellum and slight darkening to the endpapers and edges but generally a good copy.
Ownership inscription of John Copley, probably the artist and lithographer, and booklabel of SCK Smith on front free endpaper.
Morris’s dramatic Arthurian fantasy Romance which referenced his socialistic beliefs and concerns for contemporary Britain which is portrayed in the book as ‘Unsought’, an island cursed with boundless production. Unusually the main character is a woman, Birdalone, who is stolen from her mother, a weaver, and raised by a witch in a forest. She escapes by boat and begins a series of adventures and encounters on the ‘wondrous Isles’. Rather aptly, at one point she supports herself making sumptuous embroidery and becomes self sufficient...
William Morris was working on this book as he was dying. In his diary Cockerell describes him trying, in vain, to finish the design of the initial word ‘Empty’ which in the end Catterson-Smith had to finish. It was the first Kelmscott to be finished after Morris died and to be published by his trustees.