The Well at the World's End

Ralph of Upmeads, youngest son of a small king, rides out for the Well at the World's End, whose water grants long life and a kind of grace — and the road there passes through war, slavery and a woman who has drunk from it already. Tolkien and Lewis both read it closely, and much of the modern fantasy quest — the long road, the invented country — takes its shape from this book. Sixty plates from painters including David Cox and George Henry Boughton follow the wayfarer through woodland, abbey and shrine, the pilgrimage imagery that gives this quest its shape.