The Worm Ouroboros

The Worm Ouroboros is a heroic high fantasy novel by Eric Rücker Eddison. The book describes the protracted war between the domineering King Gorice of Witchland and the Lords of Demonland in an imaginary world that appears mainly medieval and partly reminiscent of Norse sagas.

Ursula K. Le Guin

“An eccentric masterpiece.”

C. S. Lewis

“A new climate of the imagination.”

About the Author

Eric Rücker Eddison (1882 - 1945) was an English civil servant and author, writing epic fantasy novels under the name E. R. Eddison. His notable works include The Worm Ouroboros (1922) and the Zimiamvian Trilogy (1935-1958). Eddison's early works of high fantasy drew strong praise from J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Tolkien generally approved Eddison's literary style, but found the underlying philosophy rebarbative; while Eddison in turn thought Tolkien's views "soft". Eddison's books are written in a meticulously recreated Jacobean prose style, seeded throughout with fragments, often acknowledged but often directly copied from his favorite authors and genres: Homer and Sappho, Shakespeare and Webster, Norse sagas and French medieval lyric poems. Critic Andy Sawyer has noted that such fragments seem to arise naturally from the "barbarically sophisticated" worlds Eddison has created.

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