 In December 1888 , the Chiswick Press published Morris ' The House of the Wolfings , a fantasy story set in Iron Age Europe which provides a reconstructed portrait of the lives of Germanic @-@ speaking Gothic tribes . It contained both prose and aspects of poetic verse . A sequel , The Roots of the Mountains , followed in 1890 . Over the coming years he would publish a number of other fantasy novels : The Story of the Glittering Plain ( 1890 ) , The Wood Beyond the World ( 1894 ) , Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair ( 1895 ) , The Well at the World 's End ( 1896 ) , The Water of the Wondrous Isles ( 1897 ) and The Sundering Flood ( 1898 ) . He also embarked on a translation of the Anglo @-@ Saxon tale , Beowulf ; because he could not fully understand Old English , his poetic translation was based largely on that already produced by Alfred John Wyatt . On publication , Morris ' Beowulf would be critically panned . Following the death of the sitting Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland , Alfred , Lord Tennyson , in October 1892 , Morris was offered the position , but turned it down , disliking its associations with the monarchy and political establishment ; instead the position went to Alfred Austin . 
