SOURCE: Latham, David. “Paradise Lost: Morris's Re-writing of The Earthly Paradise.” The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies 1, no. 1 (fall 1987): 67-75.

In the following essay, Latham analyzes Morris's omissions and revisions to The Earthly Paradise and establishes a chronology for the composition of the poem.

We know that the faculty for speed in his writing allowed Morris to indulge to the full his practice of re-writing, casting aside beginnings that did not work out to his liking. Here is evidence of it in concrete form, in the mass of Earthly Paradise MS.—a collection so important, so unique as showing a poet at work at his craft that one can but hope that, unluckily scattered as it now is, it will find its way in time to the British Museum for the benefit of students.¹

So hoped May Morris in 1936, but the manuscripts of the longest poem in...