The Story of the Glittering Plain: The First Kelmscott Book

What the records do and do not establish

The core question, what the best institutional source says about The Story of the Glittering Plain, cannot be answered from the evidence used here. The Victoria and Albert Museum's account of the Kelmscott Press, which underpins this article, describes the press and its books in general terms but does not include a record of this title. No supplied source dates the book, names a surviving copy or quotes Morris on it.

That absence matters. Claims about the book's printing date, illustrations or editions circulate widely, and this page will not repeat any of them without a source. What follows instead is the documented context: the press that would have produced the book, and the long history of Morris's work with books that led up to it. For the press as a whole, see our guide to the Kelmscott Press.

The press behind the title: Kelmscott in context

The Victoria and Albert Museum dates the founding of the Kelmscott Press to 1891, in a building a minute's walk from Morris's home in Hammersmith. Over the five years until Morris's death in 1896, the museum records that he published 66 titles there. The total output for those 66 titles was only 22,068 copies, a small run by commercial standards of the period.

The museum's record also sets out who wrote and designed the books. Morris wrote 23 of Kelmscott's titles himself, with the rest consisting mainly of either medieval works in translation or contemporary poetry. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Morris designed the press's bespoke typefaces, first Golden and then Troy, along with initial letters, borders, ornaments, frames for illustrations, title pages and printer's marks. The typefaces are covered in more detail in our page on Kelmscott typefaces in detail.

Illustration was the one area where Morris depended on others. According to the V&A, he was conscious of his limitations as a figurative artist and relied on other people to design Kelmscott illustrations, with major contributions from Edward Burne-Jones.

Roads that led to the press

The Kelmscott Press did not appear from nothing. The V&A records that Morris's enthusiasm for historical texts was ignited by illuminated manuscripts he saw in Canterbury Cathedral as a boy, and fuelled by visits to the Bodleian Library as an Oxford student. The museum also notes the influence of the Gothic Revival, including the book Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (1844) by Owen Jones and Noel Humphreys.

Practical printing contacts came early too. Morris edited the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine in 1856, which brought him into contact with the printer Charles Whittingham of the Chiswick Press. Later, in 1885, he became editor and publisher of Commonweal, the official journal of the Socialist League, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Both episodes gave him direct experience of the printed page before Kelmscott.

The most direct precursor was calligraphy. Between 1870 and 1875 Morris wrote out and decorated 21 manuscript books, many containing his translations of The Sagas of Icelanders. For these he developed a repertoire of five scripts, teaching himself roman and italic and how to produce gilded letters. His visits to Iceland in 1871 and 1873, recorded by the V&A, belong to the same Norse interests.

Where the record runs out

On The Story of the Glittering Plain itself, this article can go no further. The supplied sources contain no publication date, no description of its borders or initials, no list of holdings and no statement by Morris about it. Readers should treat uncited claims about the book, including confident statements about its place in the press's sequence, with caution until they can be checked against a named institutional record.

The documented Kelmscott story is still substantial. The press's most famous product, examined in our page on the Kelmscott Chaucer in detail, shows what Morris and Burne-Jones achieved together in the medium. The V&A judges that the press's clearly stated design principles influenced later typographers and secured it a significant place in the history of British book design.