William Morris Biography and List of Works

English craftsman, poet, and early socialist, whose designs generated the Arts and Crafts Movement in the later half of the 19th century, Morris encouraged to return to handmade objects and rejected standard tastes. He was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a close friend of the painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina Rossetti, also a poet.

"If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
(from The Beauty of Life, 1880)

Morris was born in Walthamstow, Greater London, the son of a successful businessman. He attended Marlborough College. For a while he considered taking Holy Orders, but he eventually renounced the Church, beginning his studies in architecture in Oxford. Morris took his degree in 1856, and in the same year published his early poems in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine - he also financed the publication. In 1858 Morris worked with Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and others on the frescoes in the Oxford Union. He also published THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE AND OTHER POEMS (1858), which contains much of his best work, including 'The Haystack in the Floods', 'Concerning Geffray Teste Noire', 'Shameful Death', and 'Golden Wings'. They all have medieval settings - Morris was obsessed with the medieval world.

In 1859 Morris married Jane Burden and worked as a professional painter (1857-62). Their home, Red House at Bexley, was designed by Philip Webb. It was an important landmark in domestic architecture. Morris gained literary fame with the romantic narrative THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON, which appeared in 1867, and was based on the story of Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts. It was followed by THE EARTHLY PARADISE (1868-70), and BOOK OF VERSE (1870).

In the 1860s Morris started to revolutionize the art of house decoration and furniture design in England after founding the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The firm first specialized in providing stained glass and fittings for churches, but gradually won a clientele for domestic ware. Morris's visits to Iceland in the 1870s inspired The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs (1876), which is regarded as his principal poetic achievement. In 1877 he founded the Society for the protection of Ancient Buildings in protest against the destruction being caused by the restorers.

Morris defined art as 'the expression by man of his pleasure in labour'. In the Middle Ages, according to Morris, artists were plain workmen. Things which are today's museum pieces, where once common artefacts. Art should return to its origins: 'a happiness for the maker and the user.'

"I do not want art for a few, any more than I want education for a few, or freedom for a few."

The Morris family moved into Kelmscott House at Hammersmith in 1878. In 1883 he joined the Social Democratic Federation and subsequently organized the Socialist League, with its own publication, The Commonwealth. In 1887 he and George Bernard Shaw led a political demonstration in London.

Morris's love for old handsome books and illuminated manuscripts resulted in the founding of the Kelmscott Press. From 1891 to 1898 it produced 53 titles in 66 volumes, including among others The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. He also designed three typestyles for his press, and translated Virgil's Aeneid (1875), Odyssey (1887), and Beowulf (1895). Morris's novel The Well at the World's End (1896) was a forerunner of J.R.R. Tolkien's kind of secondary word fantasy literature. A Dream of John Ball (1888) and News from Nowhere (1891) were both socialist fantasies cast in a dream setting.

"The Kelmscott Press reduced the matter to an absurdity - as seen from the point of view of brute serviceability alone - by issuing books for modern use, edited with the obsolete spelling, printed in black-letter, and bound in limp vellum fitted with thongs. As a further characteristic feature which fixes the economic place of artistic book making, there is the fact that these elegant books are, at their best, printed in limited editions. A limited edition is in effect a guarantee - somewhat crude, it is true - that this book is scarce and that it therefore is costly and lends pecuniary distinction to its consumer."
(from The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, 1953, originally published 1899)

On his death, Morris was widely mourned as 'our best man' by his fellow socialists. His view that the true stimulation to useful labour must be found in the work itself is still relevant. His designs brought about a complete revolution in public taste, though he was aware that only the rich could afford the products of his firm.

For further reading: Life of William Morris by John W. Mackail (1889); William Morris, A Critical Study by John Drinkwater (1912); Rehabilitations and Other Essays by C.S. Lewis (1939); William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary by E.P. Thompson (1955); William Morris: His Life, Works, and Friends by Philip Henderson (1967); The Work of William Morris by Paul Thompson (1967); William Morris by Holbrook Jackson (1971); William Morris: The Man and the Myth by Robert P. Arnot (1976); Worlds Beyond the World: The Fantastic Vision of William Morris by Richard Mathews (1978); William Morris: A Reference Guide by Gary L. Aho (1985); William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, ed. by E.P. Thompson (1988); The Romances of William Morris by Amanda Hodgson (1987); William Morris: A Life for Our Time by F. MacCarthy (1994); William Morris: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Peter Faulkner (1995); Art, Enterprise and Ethics: The Life and Work of William Morris by Charles Harvey, Jon Press (1996); William Morris: Redesigning the World by John Burdick (1998); William Morris and the Aesthetic Constitution of Politics by Bradley J. MacDonald (1999)

The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems, (1858)