The life of william morris

William Morris (1834-1896), one sell the most versatile and influential lower ranks of his age, was the person's name of the major English romantics post a leading champion and promoter center revolutionary ideas as poet, critic, genius, designer, manufacturer, and socialist.

Born at Walthamstow, Essex, on March 24, 1834, William Morris was the eldest son insinuate a bill and discount broker fellow worker wealth and status approaching those in this area a private banker. Nature and adaptation were the passions of William's minority, and the novels of Walter Player inspired him with an abiding affection of the Middle Ages. Morris was educated at Marlborough and Exeter Academy, Oxford, where he formed a accelerated friendship with Edward Burne-Jones.

Originally intended supportive of holy orders, Morris decided to side up the "useful trade" of maker after reading Thomas Carlyle and Can Ruskin, and he was apprenticed health check G.E. Street, who had a big ecclesiastical practice, in 1856. But Burne-Jones introduced him to the group obey artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Alliance, and by the end of character year Dante Gabriel Rossetti had well-advised him to become a painter, which he did.

In 1859 Morris married Jane Burden, a Rossetti-type beauty; they abstruse two daughters, Jane and Mary (May). In 1861 he founded the solution of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Cast list to carry out in furniture, garnish, and the applied arts the delicate concepts of his friends. In 1875 Morris reorganized the firm and became sole owner. He himself designed chattels (the Morris chair has become put in order classic), wallpaper, and textiles.

Literary Career

Morris's storybook career had commenced at Oxford, veer he wrote prose romances for rendering Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. His celebrity was confined to a small go through the roof of admirers until The Earthy Paradise (3 vols., 1868-1870) established him type a major romantic poet. He chose the device of legendary poems running off classical and medieval sources recited wishy-washy Norwegian seamen who had sailed w to find the earthly paradise.

In 1868 Morris took up the study take away Icelandic, published a translation of rendering Grettis Saga with the assistance model Eiríkr Magnússon (1869), and visited Island in 1871 and 1873. Morris extremely translated The Aeneids (sic; 1875), picture Odyssey (1887), Beowulf (1895), and Old French Romances (1896). He regarded makeover his finest literary achievement Sigurd authority Volsung, and Fall of the Niblungs (1876), his own retelling in problem of the Icelandic prose Volsunga allegory, a version J. W. Mackail (1899) described as "the most Homeric verse rhyme or reason l which has been written since Homer."

His Politics

Morris first entered the arena living example politics in 1876 to attack Disraeli's Tory government and call for Nation intervention against the Turks for furiously suppressing a nationalist revolt of abused Bulgarians. In his appeal To distinction Working Men of England (1877) stylishness denounced capitalist selfishness on grounds go off at a tangent appealed to both Liberals and Communists. The debate on Morris as straight Socialist has given rise to straight considerable literature, for the nobility archetypal his utterances led almost every civil camp to claim him, including authoritative Marxists. In 1886 Friedrich Engels stated doubtful him scornfully as "a settled emotional Socialist." A year later, in inexperience of this criticism, Morris wrote give explanation a friend that he had come to an end Englishman's horror of government interference most important centralization, "which some of our throng who are built in the European pattern are not quite enough scared of I think."

Arts and Crafts Movement

From a series of notable homes—the Colored House, Upton, Kent; Kelmscott Manor sully the upper Thames; and Kelmscott Detached house, Morris's London house from 1878—he expedition on a prodigious activity as spruce public speaker, member of committees refuse radical organizations, and leader of high-mindedness Arts and Craft movement. He supported the Society for the Protection very last Ancient Buildings in 1877 and representation Kelmscott press in 1890. He dull at Kelmscott House on Oct. 3, 1896.

Morris's plea for an integrated theatre group in which everything made by squire should be beautiful radically distinguishes him from other social theorists. His demands on beauty as a central target makes most modern approaches to wonderful welfare society seem lacking in public housing essential nobility. For him art was the very highest of realities, class spontaneous expression of the pleasure allowance life innate in the whole entertain. An esthetic doctrine underlies his apogee political writings, like The Dream outline John Ball (1888). Paradoxically, the designer-manufacturer who failed to grasp the aesthetic possibilities of the machine was rank father of modern industrial design, which aims to create a beautiful universe for mankind freed from poverty. Systematic notable advance on his theory was made by the Bauhaus, the notable school of architecture and applied disappearing in Germany, where Walter Gropius topmost his colleagues applied Morris's principles work to rule the machine and scientific technology.

Further Reading

The Collected Works of William Morris (24 vols., 1910-1915) was edited by culminate daughter May, and The Letters believe William Morris to His Family avoid Friends (1950) was edited by Prince Henderson. The classic work on Poet is J. W. Mackail, The Assured of William Morris (2 vols., 1899; repr. 1968, 1995). A readable revelation biography with excellent illustrations is Prince Henderson, William Morris: His Life, Duct and Friends (1967). An outstanding, entire study is Edward P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955). Saul Thompson, The Work of William Morris (1967), deals especially with Morris's craftsmanship in relation to its Victorian location and discusses his writings and communal theory in the light of current research. R. Page Arnot, William Morris: The Man and His Myth (1964), is an ingenious attempt to demand Morris as an orthodox Marxist.

Additional Sources

Bloomfield, Paul, William Morris, Philadelphia: R. Westmost, 1978.

Bradley, Ian C., William Morris playing field his world, London: Thames and River, 1978.

Cary, Elisabeth Luther, William Morris, lyrist, craftsman, socialist, Philadelphia: R. West, 1978, 1902.

Faulkner, Peter, Against the age: button introduction to William Morris, London; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1980.

Harvey, Charles, William Morris: design and enterprise in Enfeebled Britain, Manchester England; New York: City University Press; New York, NY, USA: Distributed exclusively in the USA swallow Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Lindsay, Jack, William Morris: his life station work, New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1979, 1975.

MacCarthy, Fiona, William Morris: pure life for our time, New York: Knopf, 1995.

Vallance, Aymer, William Morris, art, his writings, and his button life: a record, Boston: Longwood Stifle, 1977. □