The Worm Ouroboros

✍ Scribed by E. R. Eddison

• Publisher: Dodo Press
• Year: 1922
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 518 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

{Sept 2020 - epub revision. Separated content so chapters are on own page, created TOC}

Paperback, 520 pages
Published 1922
Fantasy Masterworks #3
The Worm Ouroboros weaves strands from Norse saga, Greek myth, and Elizabethan drama together with magical adventure to produce one of the most eccentric masterpieces of English literature. Anticipating J. R. R. Tolkien by a few decades, E. R. Eddison imagined an Other World full of wonders and a huge cast of warriors, witches, and monsters. He also invented one of the truly distinctive styles in English prose. Its language is densely ornamented and deliberately archaic, but also precise, vigorous, and flexible enough to convey wistful tenderness one minute and violent action the next. In the decades since its first publication in 1922, The Worm Ouroboros has become a touchstone for lovers of fantasy literature, influencing several generations of writers and treasured by readers who fall under its spell.
A fantastic and stylized story of a protracted war between domineering King Gorice of Witchland and the Lords of Demonland in an medieval world reminiscent of Norse sagas.
Eric Rucker Eddison (1882-1945) was an English civil servant and author, writing under the name "E. R. Eddison. " Eddison was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge and joined the Board of Trade in 1906, retiring in 1938 in order to work full time on his fiction. During a distinguished career he was awarded the CMG Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1924 and the CB Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1929 for public service with the Board of Trade. He is best known for his early romance The Worm Ouroboros (1922). His other works include Poems, Letters and Memories of Philip Sidney Nairn (1916), Styrbiorn the Strong (1926) and Egil's Saga (1930). He also wrote three volumes set in the imaginary world Zimiamvia, known as the Zimiamvian Trilogy: Mistress of Mistresses (1935), A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), and The Mezentian Gate (1958). The Zimiamvia books were not conceived as a trilogy but as part of a larger work left incomplete by Eddison's death. In fact, The Mezentian Gate itself is unfinished, though Eddison provided summaries of the missing chapters shortly before his death.