The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems

William Morris was twenty-four when this first book of verse appeared in 1858, generally counted the first volume of Pre-Raphaelite poetry to reach print. Thirty poems fill it, many of them dramatic monologues owing something to Browning. The title piece hands Queen Guenevere her own voice: accused of adultery with Launcelot, she answers her judges in a long, swerving, defiant speech drawn from Malory. Other poems leave Arthur for the wars of Froissart’s chronicles, among them “The Haystack in the Floods”, where Jehane and Robert are intercepted in the rain while riding for English-held Gascony. A third group works as mood pieces more than stories, full of closed rooms and strange colour. The book sold badly and drew few good reviews. Its reputation rose later, and readers now often prefer it to the smoother narrative verse that made Morris popular.