Kenneth Morris
Kenneth Morris was a Welsh author born in 1879 who became notable for his contributions to fantasy literature, particularly through the lens of Welsh mythology. After completing his secondary education, he pursued knowledge with the Theosophical Society, where he began writing poetry and short stories influenced by his native heritage. Morris moved to California in 1908 to work at a study center for the Society, where he wrote his first novel, *The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed* (1914), which is a retelling of tales from the Welsh mythological text, *The Mabinogion*. Throughout his career, he published various works, including *The Secret Mountain, and Other Tales* (1926) and *Book of the Three Dragons* (1930), which further showcased his ability to rework Welsh legends. Despite his initial obscurity, Morris gained recognition posthumously, particularly due to Ursula K. Le Guin's endorsement, which rekindled interest in his writings. His final novel, *The Chalchiuhite Dragon*, published posthumously in 1992, marked a departure into Native American myths. Morris's unique approach to fantasy has led to recognition as a precursor to modern Celtic fantasy authors, with his works being reexamined and celebrated in recent decades.
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Kenneth Morris
Author
- Born: 1879
- Birthplace: Wales
- Died: 1937
Biography
Kenneth Morris was born in 1879 in Wales. His family sent him to England for his education. Upon finishing his secondary education in 1896, Morris sought further learning from the Dublin Lodge of the Theosophical Society, rather than traditional university education. It was in the journals of the society that Morris wrote his first poems and short stories, drawing on his native knowledge of Welsh legend and mythology.
When the Society established a study center in Point Loma, California, Morris went there in 1908, and remained there writing and teaching for more than twenty years. It was their press that produced Morris’s first novel, The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed (1914), a retelling of a tale from the Welsh mythography The Mabinogion. His short stories from the Theosophical Society magazines were collected in The Secret Mountain, and Other Tales (1926).
In 1930, Morris returned to his native Wales. The same year, his second novel reworking Welsh legend, Book of the Three Dragons, was published in the United States. For the next seven years, until his death in 1937, Morris helped establish Theosophical lodges in Wales, and worked on a third fantasy novel, which he did not live to publish.
In the ensuing decades, Morris’s works lay largely unread. However, one influential reader, science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. LeGuin, in a 1978 essay mentioned Morris as one of the top three stylists of fantasy prose—with E. R. Eddison and J. R. R. Tolkien. LeGuin’s legions of readers began looking for Morris’s books. In 1992, fantasy researcher Douglas Anderson edited Morris’s final novel for TOR books. This posthumous novel, The Chalchiuhite Dragon, instead of drawing from Morris’s familiar Welsh myth, drew on Native American myths from Mexico. This was not absolutely new territory for Morris, since his short stories had drawn from virtually every spiritual tradition in the world. However, it was the first and only time Morris did so on the larger scale of the novel.
In 1995, Anderson collected and edited nearly forty of Morris’s short stories under the title of The Dragon Path: Collected Tales of Kenneth Morris. The same year, Anderson reprinted The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed, and in 2004 The Book of the Three Dragons. A 2004 review of The Book of the Three Dragons in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine called it “perhaps the single best fantasy adaptation from a real-world mythology.” Writers of the late twentieth century who thought they invented the subgenre of Celtic fantasy were often surprised to find Kenneth Morris half a century ahead of them.