The Roots of the Mountain

The first step towards the characteristic large-scale fantasies which have had such influence on the genre -- and, indirectly, on [science fiction] -- is "The House of the Wolfings" (1889). Here the setting is quasi-historical: a European Saxon community is resisting the decadent advances of late-Imperial Rome. The romantic-supernatural story contains a large admixture of verse. What later critics were to call "The Teutonic thing" or "the Northern thing" continued in "The Roots of the Mountain" (1890), another tale of a tribal communicty whose historical context is less definite." -- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy