William Morris

William Morris, from Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day by Frederick Waddy (1873). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

William Morris
Born	March 24 1834(1834-Template:MONTHNUMBER-24)
Died	October 3, 1896 (aged 62)
Nationality	English
Occupation	Artist Writer socialist
Known for	Wallpaper and textile design

William Morris (24 March 1834 - 3 October 1896) was an English poet, artist, and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and English Arts and Crafts Movement.

William Morris self-portrait, 1856. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Overview

Morris was born at Walthamstow, and educated at Marlborough School and Oxford. After being articled as an architect he was for some years a painter, and then joined in founding the manufacturing and decorating firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., in which Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and other artists were partners. By this and other means he did much to influence the public taste in furnishing and decoration. He was one of the originators of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, to which he contributed poems, tales, and essays, and in 1858 he published Defence of Guenevere, and other poems. The Life and Death of Jason followed in 1867, The Earthly Paradise in 1868-1870, and Love is Enough in 1875. In 1878 he also published a translation in verse of Virgil's Æneid. Travels in Iceland led to the writing of Three Northern Love Stories, and the epic of Sigurd the Volsung (1876). His translation of the Odyssey in verse appeared 1887. A series of prose romances began with The House of the Wolfings (1889), and included The Roots of the Mountains, Story of the Glittering Plain, The Wood beyond the World, The Well at the World's End (1896), and posthumously The Water of the Wondrous Isles and Story of the Sundering Flood. In addition to poems and tales he produced various illuminated manuscripts, including 2 of Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam, and many controversial writings, among which are tales and tracts in advocacy of socialism. To this class belong the Dream of John Ball (1888) and News from Nowhere (1891). In 1890 Morris started the Kelmscott Press, for which he designed type and decorations. For his subjects as a writer he drew upon classic and Gothic models alike. He may perhaps be regarded as the chief of the modern romantic school, inspired by the love of beauty for its own sake; his poetry is rich and musical, and he has a power of description which makes his pictures live and glow, but his narratives sometimes suffer from length and slowness of movement.

He was a major contributor to reviving traditional textile arts and methods of production, and a founder of the SPAB, now a statutory element in the preservation of historic buildings in the UK.

Youth and education

Morris was born in Walthamstow, London, the 3rd child and the eldest son of William Morris, a partner in the firm of Sanderson & Co., bill brokers in the City of London. His mother was Emma (Shelton), daughter of Joseph Shelton, a teacher of music in Worcester.

As a child Morris was delicate but studious. He learned to read early, and by the time he was four years old he was familiar with most of the Waverley novels. When he was six the family moved to Woodford Hall, where new opportunities for an out-of-door life brought the boy health and vigour. He rode about Epping Forest, sometimes in a toy suit of armour, where he became a close observer of animal nature and was able to recognize any bird upon the wing. At the same time he continued to read whatever came in his way and was particularly attracted by the stories in the Arabian Nights and by the designs in Gerard's Herbal. He studied with his sisters' governess until he was nine, when he was sent to a school at Walthamstow.

In 1842, his sister Isabella was born. She grew to be the churchwoman who oversaw the revival of the Deaconess Order in the Anglican Communion.

In his 13th year their father died, leaving the family well-to-do. Much of the family's wealth came from a copper and arsenic mine, Devon Great Consols. Beginning as a copper mine this company became the world's largest producer of arsenic, which was much in demand for dyes,inks, and industrial uses. Arsenic dyes produced the vivid greens of the wallpapers produced by Morris & Co., delighting his followers while slowly killing them and their children. The arsenic produced by Devon Great Consols killed untold numbers of people around the world, starting with the laborers in the mines, many of whom were small children. It is ironic that William Morris in his later years wrote eloquently about the horrors of industrialization while never mentioning the ruin wrote by Devon Great Consols on the Tamar Valley, which remains a wasteland today, or the pollution of the River Tamar with poisonous compounds. He never in his life admitted that the basis of his family's wealth was the inhuman suffering of countless men, women, and children who died horrible, agonizing deaths, in order that he and his might live in comfort and security. <Meharg, Andrea A., Venomous Earth, MacMillan 2005>

The home at Woodford was broken up, as being unnecessarily large, and in 1848 the family relocated to Water House and William Morris entered Marlborough School, where his father had bought him a nomination. Morris was at the school for 3 years, but gained little from attending it beyond a taste for architecture, fostered by the school library, and an attraction towards the Anglo-Catholic movement. He made but slow progress in school work and at Christmas 1851 was removed and sent to live as a private pupil with the Rev. F.B. Guy, Assistant Master at Forest School, Walthamstow, and later Canon of St. Alban's, for a year to prepare him for University. The Forest School archives still contain many items of correspondence from Morris, and the School boasts a Morris stained glass window in the Chapel.

Oxford

Morris's painting La belle Iseult, 1859, (sometimes also called "Queen Guinevere") is his only surviving easel painting, now in the Tate Gallery. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In June 1852 Morris entered Exeter College, Oxford, though since the college was full, he was unable to go into residence until January 1853. At Exeter, Morris met Edward Burne-Jones, also a 1t year undergraduate, who became his life-long friend and collaborator. Morris also joined a Birmingham group at Pembroke College, known among themselves as the "Brotherhood" and to historians as the "Pembroke set".

Together, they read theology, ecclesiastical history, and medieval poetry; studied art, and during the long vacations visited English churches and the Continental cathedrals. They became strongly influenced by the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, John Ruskin's essay "The Nature of Gothic" from the 2nd volume of The Stones of Venice, Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur and the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Morris began to adopt Ruskin's philosophy of rejecting the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture in favour of a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising artisans to the status of artists, creating art that should be affordable and hand-made, with no hierarchy of artistic mediums.

Moreover, Morris began at this time to write poetry and many of his early pieces, afterwards destroyed, were held by sound judges to be equal to anything else he ever worked on. Both Morris and Burne-Jones had come to Oxford with the intention of taking holy orders, but as they felt their way, both decided their energies were best spent on social reform. Morris decided to become an architect and for the better propagation of the views of the new brotherhood a magazine was at the same time projected, which was to make a specialty of social articles, besides poems and short stories.

At the beginning of 1856 both schemes came to a head together. Morris, having passed his finals in the previous term, was entered as a pupil at the office of George Edmund Street, one of the leading English Gothic revival architects who had his headquarters in Oxford as architect to the diocese; and on New Year's Day the 1st issue of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine appeared. The expenses of publishing were borne entirely by Morris, but he resigned the formal editorship after the 1st issue. Many distinguished compositions appeared in its pages, but it gradually languished and was given up after a year's experiment. The chief immediate result was the friendship between Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a contributor.

Apprenticeship

In Street’s office Morris formed an intimate and lifelong friendship with the senior clerk, Philip Webb, which had an important influence over the development taken by English domestic architecture during the next generation. He worked in Street’s office for 9 months, at Oxford and then in London when Street removed there in the autumn. Morris worked hard both in and out of office hours at architecture and painting, and he studied architectural drawing under Webb. Rossetti persuaded him that he was better suited for a painter, and after a while he devoted himself exclusively to that branch of art.

That summer the 2 friends visited Oxford and, finding the new Oxford Union debating-hall under construction, pursued a commission to paint the upper walls with scenes from Le Morte d'Arthur and to decorate the roof between the open timbers. 7 artists were recruited, among them Valentine Prinsep and Arthur Hughes, and the work was hastily begun. Morris worked with feverish energy and on finishing the portion assigned to him, proceeded to decorate the roof. The frescoes, done too soon and too fast, began to fade at once and now are barely decipherable.

Marriage and family

Rossetti had seen Jane Burden at a theatre performance, and recruited her to model as Guinevere for the Oxford Union murals. Morris was smitten with Jane from the start. They became engaged in 1858 and married at St Michael at the Northgate, Oxford, on 26 April 1859, settling temporarily at 41 Great Ormond Street, London. Morris's only surviving painting in oils is of Jane Burden as La Belle Iseult. William and Jane had two daughters, Jane Alice (Jenny), born January 1861, who developed epilepsy in her teens, and Mary (May) (March 1862–1938), who became the editor of her father's works, a prominent socialist, and an accomplished designer and craftswoman.

Although of humble origins and unschooled in her youth, Jane Morris underwent a remarkable self-education after her marriage. A striking beauty, she mixed freely with the Pre-Raphaelites and posed many times for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom Jane sustained a long affair. The Morrises' initial happiness together did not survive the 1st 10 years of their marriage, but divorce was unthinkable, and they remained together until Morris's death.

Red House

The Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent, 2004. Photo by Velela. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

For several years after his marriage Morris was absorbed in 2 connected occupations: the building and decoration of a house for himself and Jane, and the foundation of a firm of decorators who were also artists, with the view of reinstating decoration, down to its smallest details, as one of the fine arts. Meanwhile he was slowly abandoning painting; none of his paintings are dated later than 1862.

Red House at Bexleyheath in Kent, so named when the use of red brick without stucco was still unusual in domestic architecture, was built for Morris to designs by Webb; it was Webb's 1st building as an independent architect Red House featured ceiling paintings by Morris, wall-hangings designed by Morris and worked by himself and Jane; furniture painted by Morris and Rossetti, and wall-paintings and stained- and painted glass designed by Burne-Jones. However it contained no wallpaper, printed or woven fabrics, or carpets by the firm, these being manufactured from 1864, 1868 and 1875 respectively.

Decorative arts

In 1861, the decorative arts firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.(later described by Nicholas Pevsner as the "beginning of a new era in Western art") was founded with Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb as partners, together with Charles Joseph Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall, the former of whom was a member of the Oxford Brotherhood, and the latter a friend of Brown and Rossetti. The prospectus set forth that the firm would undertake carving, stained glass, metal-work, paper-hangings, chintzes (printed fabrics), and carpets. The decoration of churches was from the startt an important part of the business. On its non-ecclesiastical side it gradually was extended to include, besides painted windows and mural decoration, furniture, metal and glass wares, cloth and paper wall-hangings, embroideries, jewellery, woven and knotted carpets, silk damasks, and tapestries. The original headquarters of the firm were at 8 Red Lion Square.

The work shown by the firm at the 1862 International Exhibition attracted much notice, and from 1866 began to make a profit. In the autumn of 1864, a severe illness obliged Morris to choose between giving up his home at Red House in Kent and giving up his work in London. With great reluctance he gave up Red House, and in 1865 established himself under the same roof with his workshops, now relocated to Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

An important commission of 1867 was the "green dining room" at the South Kensington Museum (now the Morris Room of the Victoria and Albert), featuring stained glass windows and panel figures by Burne-Jones, panels with branches of fruit or flowers by Morris, and olive branches and a frieze by Philip Webb.

Although already the firms paid manager, in 1874 Morris wished to take sole control of the now profitable firm, but, unsurprisingly, had to buy out other shareholders. This venture into capitalism was a severe test of friendship with Rossetti and Ford Maddox Brown. Throughout his life, Morris continued as principal owner and design director, although the company changed names. Its most famous incarnation was as Morris & Co. The firm's designs are still sold today under licenses given to Sanderson & Sons (which markets the "Morris & Co." brand) and Liberty of London.

Kelmscott Manor

In 1869, Morris and Rossetti rented a country house, Kelmscott Manor, at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, as a summer retreat, but it soon became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris to have a long-lasting and complicated liaison. The two spent summers there, with the Morris children, while Morris himself traveled to Iceland in 1871 and 1873. Kelmscott Manor remained an important retreat and symbol of simple country life for Morris in later years. It was the model for "the old house by the Thames" in Morris's News from Nowhere.

Socialism

In the 1870s, Morris had begun to take an active interest in politics. He became treasurer of the National Liberal League in 1879; but after the Irish coercive measures of 1881, he finally abandoned the Liberal Party and advanced into socialist politics.

In January 1883, Morris was enrolled among the members of the Democratic Federation, forerunner of the Social Democratic Federation. Over the next two years, Morris and party founder Henry Hyndman worked together as the best-known leaders of the fledgling organisation. For the rest of the decade, his creative efforts sprang from his socialist politics.

In March 1883 he gave an address at Manchester on "Art, Wealth and Riches"; in May he was elected upon the executive of the federation. In September he wrote the 1st of his "Chants for Socialists." About the same time he shocked the authorities by pleading in University Hall for the wholesale support of socialism among the undergraduates at Oxford. To the surprise of many who saw him as a respectable poet and decorator from that point on he threw himself wholeheartedly into the nascent Socialist movement, becoming co-author of the Social Democratic Federation manifesto.

Disagreements with Hyndman over Irish Home Rule and a generalized mistrust of Hyndman's personal motives led to the foundation of the breakaway Socialist League in December 1884, encouraged by Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx. As the leading figure in the organization Morris embarked on a relentless series of speeches and talks on street corners, in working men's clubs and lecture theatres across England and Scotland. Eventual repression of street corner meetings by the police meant that free speech, rather than economic working-class causes, became the practical focus of the League. Morris also became both editor and principal contributor to the League's monthly - soon to become weekly - newspaper, Commonweal, which became the place where his published essays, poems, and other works 1st appeared. (His best known prose works, the utopian News from Nowhere, and A Dream of John Ball were both printed here in serialized form.)

From 1887, anarchists began to outnumber socialists in the Socialist League. The 3rd Annual Conference of the League, held in London on 29 May 1887 marked the change, with a majority of the 24 branch delegates voting in favor of an anarchist-sponsored resolution declaring that "This conference endorses the policy of abstention from parliamentary action, hitherto pursued by the League, and sees no sufficient reason for altering it." Morris played peacemaker but sided with the anti-Parliamentarians, who won control of the League, which consequently lost the support of Engels and saw the departure of Eleanor Marx and her partner Edward Aveling to form the separate Bloomsbury Socialist Society.

File:Frederick Hollyer Burne-Jones and Morris 1890.jpg

William Morris (right) with artist Edward Burne-Jones, 1890.

By 1889, the anarchist wing had completely captured the organisation. William Morris was stripped of the editorship of Commonweal in favor of Frank Kitz, an anarchist workman. Morris was left to foot the ongoing operating deficit of the publication, approximately £4 per week — this at a time when £150 per year was the average annual family income in the kingdom. By the autumn of 1890, Morris had had enough and he, too, withdrew from the Socialist League.

The following years have been described as a time of disillusionment for Morris, but he continued to write articles and give public lectures in active support of the Socialist cause. Morris himself was perhaps the greatest British representative of what has come to be called libertarian socialism. Liberated from internal factional struggles, he retracted his anti-Parliamentary position and worked for Socialist unity, giving his last public lecture in January 1896 on the subject of "One Socialist Party."

Historic preservation

Although Morris never became a practising architect, his interest in architecture continued throughout his life. In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (sometimes known as "Anti-Scrape"), which sprang into being as a practical protest against a scheme for restoring and reviving Tewkesbury Abbey. His preservation work resulted indirectly in the founding of the National Trust. Combined with the inspiration of John Ruskin — in particular his essay "The Nature of Gothic" — architecture played an important symbolic part in Morris's approach to socialism.

Another aspect of Morris' preservationism was his desire to protect the natural world from the ravages of pollution and industrialism, causing some historians of the green movement to regard Morris as an important forerunner of modern environmentalism.

Later years

In his later years, Morris returned to the paramount interests of his life, art and literature. When his business was enlarged in 1881 by the establishment of a tapestry industry at Merton Abbey Mills, in Surrey, Morris found yet another means for expressing the medievalism that inspired all his work, whether on paper or at the loom. He then added another to his many activities; he assumed a direct interest in typography. In the early seventies he had devoted much attention to the arts of manuscript illumination and calligraphy. He himself wrote several manuscripts, with illuminations of his own devising.

From this to attempts to beautify the art of modern printing was but a short step. The House of the Wolfings, printed in 1889 at the Chiswick Press, was the first essay in this direction; and in the same year, in The Roots of the Mountains, he carried his theory a step further. Some 15 months later he added a private printing-press to his multifarious occupations and started upon the 1st volume issued from the Kelmscott Press. For the last few years of his life this new interest remained the absorbing one.

After his departure from the Socialist League, Morris divided his time between the Firm, then relocated to Merton Abbey, Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, the Kelmscott Press, and Kelmscott Manor. At his death at Kelmscott House in 1896 he was interred in the Kelmscott village churchyard.

Writing

Morris was a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and translations of ancient and medieval texts. His earliest poems were published when he was 24 years old, and he was polishing his final novel, The Sundering Flood, at the time of his death. His daughter May's edition of Morris's Collected Works (1910–1915) runs to 24 volumes, and two more were published in 1936.

Poetry

Morris began publishing poetry and short stories in 1856 through the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine which he founded with his friends and financed while at university. His debut volume, The Defence of Guenevere, and other poems (1858), was the 1st book of Pre-Raphaelite poetry to be published. The dark poems, set in a sombre world of violence, were coolly received by the critics, and he was discouraged from publishing more for a number of years. "The Haystack in the Floods", one of the poems in that collection, is probably now one of his better-known poems. It is a grimly realistic piece set during the Hundred Years War in which the doomed lovers Jehane and Robert have a last parting in a convincingly portrayed rain-swept countryside. One early minor poem was "Masters in this Hall" (1860), a Christmas carol written to an old French tune. Another Christmas-themed poem is "The Snow in the Street", adapted from "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" in The Earthly Paradise.

When he returned to poetry in the late 1860s it was with The Life and Death of Jason, which was published with great success in 1867. Jason was followed by The Earthly Paradise, a huge collection of poems loosely bound together in what he called a leather strapbound book. The theme was of a group of medieval wanderers who set out to search for a land of everlasting life; after much disillusion, they discover a surviving colony of Greeks with whom they exchange stories. The collection brought him almost immediate fame and popularity (all of his books thereafter were published as "by the author of The Earthly Paradise"). The last-written stories in the collection are retellings of Icelandic sagas. From then until his Socialist period Morris's fascination with the ancient Germanic and Norse peoples dominated his writing. Together with his Icelandic friend Eiríkr Magnússon he was the st to translate many of the Icelandic sagas into English, and his own epic retelling of the story of Sigurd the Volsung was his favourite among his poems. Due to his wide poetic acclaim, Morris was quietly approached with an offer of the Poet Laureateship after the death of Tennyson in 1892, but declined.

Translations

Morris had met Eiríkr Magnússon in 1868, and together they began to learn the Icelandic language. Morris published translations of The Saga of Gunnlaug Worm-Tongue and Grettis Saga in 1869, and the Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs in 1870. An additional volume was published under the title of Three Northern Love Stories in 1873.

In the mid-1870s, Morris's leisure was mainly occupied by work as a scribe and illuminator; to this period belong, among other works, two manuscripts of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam with illustrations by Burne-Jones. He was for some time engaged in the production of a magnificent folio manuscript of Virgil's Aeneid, and in the course of that work had begun to translate the poem into English verse. The manuscript was finally laid aside for the translation, and the Eneids of Virgil was published in November 1875. Morris also translated large numbers of medieval and classical works, including Homer's Odyssey in 1887.

Prose romances

In the last nine years of his life, Morris wrote a series of imaginative fictions usually referred to as the "prose romances". These novels — including The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End — have been credited as important milestones in the history of fantasy fiction, because, while other writers wrote of foreign lands, or of dream worlds, or the future (as Morris did in News from Nowhere), Morris's works were the 1st to be set in an entirely invented fantasy world. These were attempts to revive the genre of medieval romance, and written in imitation of medieval prose. Morris' prose style in these novels has been praised by Edward James, who described them as "among the most lyrical and enchanting fantasies in the English language."

On the other hand, L. Sprague de Camp considered Morris' fantasies to be not wholly successful, partly because Morris eschewed many literary techniques from later eras. In particular, De Camp argued the plots of the novels are heavily driven by coincidence; while many things just happened in the romances, the novels are still weakened by the dependence on it. Nevertheless, large subgenres of the field of fantasy have sprung from the romance genre, but indirectly, through their writers' imitation of William Morris. Early fantasy writers like Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison and James Branch Cabell were familiar with Morris' romances. The Wood Beyond the World is considered to have heavily influenced C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, while J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired by Morris's reconstructions of early Germanic life in The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains. (The young Tolkien attempted a retelling of the story of Kullervo from the Kalevala in the style of The House of the Wolfings). Sir Henry Newbolt's medieval allegorical novel, Aladore, was influenced by Morris' fantasies. James Joyce also drew inspiration from his work.

Critical introduction

by John William Mackail

Of all the great English poets, William Morris is the one whom it is least possible to consider or to appreciate as a poet alone. To him, poetry was not an isolated art. It was the application to the material of rhythmical language of the constructive and decorative principles common to all arts. And art itself—of which all the particular arts were the applications to one or another material—was not an isolated thing. It was simply the visible or audible recorded expression of the joy of life, “production,” as Aristotle had defined it long before, “with pleasure and for the sake of pleasure.” His well-known sayings that “talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense, it is a mere matter of craftsmanship,” and that, in terms still more concrete and vivid, “if a chap can’t compose an epic while he ’s weaving tapestry, he had better shut up,” express his considered doctrine, and also his consistent practice. He handled the art of poetry as he handled the arts of weaving or dyeing or printing, the production of household furniture or wall-decoration; all were pleasurable production meant for pleasurable use. Hence while it remains true that his poetry, like that of others, has to be estimated simply as poetry, it will convey its full meaning only to those who realize what he meant it to be, what place he meant it to occupy in a scheme of human life. It would be beside the point here to enlarge on the manifold scope of his activities, or on the influence which in many ways they exercised, and still exercise, on civilization. But neither must this be forgotten; for otherwise we should, by treating his poetry as a detached thing, miss its structural import and part of its individual quality. That he came to be known as “the author of The Earthly Paradise” is more than a happy accident. For the creation of an earthly paradise in a perfectly literal sense of the words, of an actual world in which beauty and joy should be incorporated with daily life and be of the essence of all productive activity, was the object which he pursued throughout; and his own divergent activities were all threaded from that one centre.

This way of regarding and handling poetry began in him as an instinct, and gradually wrought itself out into a settled doctrine. In his earlier poetry it is only latent. His earliest volume represents the last outcome of the Romantic movement, and its linking up with the mediæval tradition through a new imaginative insight into history. It had been foreshadowed by Keats in poems like the Eve of St. Mark and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and was intimately connected with the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the potent influence, alike in poetry and painting, of Rossetti. The Defence of Guenevere, like the Lyrical Ballads of 60 years before, attracted little immediate attention, but, like them, was a germinal force of incalculable vitality. Technically the poems in this volume are uncertain in handling, immature, full of the crude sap of youth. But they were the symbol of the new era and the manifestation of a new poet. “Where,” in Swinburne’s just words, “among other and older poets of his time and country, is one comparable for perception and experience of tragic truth, of subtle and noble, terrible and piteous things? where a touch of passion at once so broad and so sure?” The chord of imaginative beauty sounded by three typical pieces, King Arthur’s Tomb, The Haystack in the Floods, Summer Dawn, is something which stands by itself and alone. Arthurian romance and the early Middle Ages, Chaucer and Froissart and the full expansion of the fourteenth century, are recaptured and brought into vital connexion with the beauty and wonder of the actual world as these took shape in a fresh and wholly original and underivative imagination. Perhaps now, after sixty more years have passed, these poems appeal to new minds with even enhanced poignancy. They have never been widely popular; the fashion they set, the school they formed, are negligible. Their effect has been over poetry itself, in a way at once more intimate and more profound.

To this early germinal period of romantic exploration succeeded, after an interval of nearly ten years, the middle period of trained and deliberate craftsmanship. This is represented by the Life and Death of Jason and The Earthly Paradise. English poetry in the early sixties had come to a point of uncertainty and partial stagnation. Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon (1864), Morris’s Jason (1867), and Rossetti’s Poems (1870) mark the emergence of fresh forces which poured new life into it and gave it a fresh orientation. All three won immediate and wide recognition.

In Jason, the Chaucerian element in the mixed impulse of Morris’s earlier volume becomes predominant. Here he developed his full gift as a story-teller, a gift rare among poets, and absent or inconspicuous in many of the greatest. Constructional power, sense of design, and the application to design of rich continuous ornament had now all been mastered. The long narrative-poem—a form in which English poetry had but little of the first rank to show, and which had succumbed to the idyllic treatment of episodes—was reinstated. But in Jason Morris also re-established that connexion with the Middle Ages which had been broken by the Elizabethans and since then, in the main, lost. Its whole atmosphere is mediaeval, in the sense of its resuming the mediaeval structure and colour, and applying them to a classical story.

	“—Rede haue I
	Of Gawen and Sir Guy,
	And tell can a great pece
	Of the Golden Flece,
	How Jason it wan
	Lyke a valyaunt man.”

Yet it is essentially new and modern; the synthesis of the classical and the romantic past is vitalized by an original genius, in advance of rather than behind its own age. It likewise reinstated the ten-syllabled rhyming couplet—to all intents and purposes Chaucer’s invention—in its old flexibility and fluency. Keats in Lamia, Shelley in Epipsychidion—to some degree, in an odd way of his own, Browning also in Sordello—had made tentative approaches to this; but its accomplishment was effected by Morris alone; nor, though he has had many imitators, did he transmit the secret to any successor.

In The Earthly Paradise this vital synthesis was carried farther. Few, perhaps, of its readers go beyond reading it as a mere series of stories; and in these they find a certain sameness, some languor of movement, even a cloying repetition of ornament. But the 25 stories were designed, and should be thought of, as large decorative panels in a single design, to which the setting gives at once the clue and the justification. That whole design is so huge in scale—some 42,000 lines in all—and so intricate as well as skilful in its construction, that it does not arrest notice when one is in close contact with it. Like one of those French Gothic cathedrals which Morris ranked among the highest products of human genius, the whole is partly ignored, partly taken for granted, by those who fix their attention on successive details. The subordination of the parts to the whole, the calculated repetitions as of arch and column and window, are only appreciated when we realize that they are exactly what the artist meant. The principle of “sheer craftsmanship” in poetry is here carried to its full stretch. The stories unroll themselves fluently and equably over large spaces in which the poetry is deliberately diffused and not concentrated. The pattern is large, and consists largely of background, in which the detail is treated accordingly. It even passes sometimes into what corresponds to a diapered pattern. The rose-garden or apple-orchard, the “brown bird” which recurs in The Earthly Paradise almost to satiety, are a considered convention for narrative ornament. For this reason, extracts or specimens give little idea of the whole structure. It is a sort of work that does not lend itself to detached quotation; it has few purple patches, few memorable single lines. Such there are, but they are mostly to be found in the more highly-wrought interludes of the setting, or in the interposed lyrics through which the large equable flow of the narrative is gathered up, as it were, to a greater tension. One result is a certain sense of superflux, even of monotony; another is that Morris never, as very good poets often do, “preaches over his liquor.”

In The Earthly Paradise the reconquest of Chaucer’s ten-syllabled couplet already effected in Jason is accompanied by a similar reconquest of the other two Chaucerian narrative-metres, the eight-syllabled couplet and the rhyme-royal. All three are handled on a large scale, and with complete success. In these forms, Morris felt that he had now done what he could do; and he set himself to fresh explorations farther afield. The “morality” of Love is Enough, which was the first important result of these new experiments, is probably the least popular of his larger works, as it is the most difficult; and it must be added that the labour shows in it, as well as the result of the labour. He was here trying to revive and readapt not only an obsolete dramatic form, but a rhythmical structure to which Chaucer himself had given the death-blow. The native English verse based on stress and alliteration had been decisively displaced by the rhyming syllabic metres of France. But it has always subsisted under the surface, and in the hands of an experimenter of native English genius is almost bound to reappear. To this experiment Morris applied great skill and patience. But it suffers from being too obviously experimental, and too elaborate in its constructional artifice. This, as in some of his latest and possibly finest designs in decorated fabrics (the “chintzes” which for many years drew, from critics as superficial as they were supercilious, sneers at a “poet-upholsterer”), is carried a little farther than can make effective appeal to any one but an expert craftsman. For such, Love is Enough will always be a work of extreme interest and suggestiveness. But that is not, according to Morris’s own doctrine, or indeed according to any tenable conception, the real function of poetry.

In Sigurd the Volsung, not long afterwards, he broke fresh ground alike in subject and in treatment. It is his last large work in poetry, and though it was not, and is not, the most popular, it is probably, and certainly was in his own judgment, the greatest. In it he passed from romance, to which, with one notable exception, his previous work belongs, to the amplitude, height, and tension of epic. The effect on him of the Icelandic Sagas, as soon as he came to know them, was immense and in some sense revolutionary. It transformed the romantic dream-world, a decoration hung, as it were, for joy and solace on the background of life, into an actual world more wonderful in its vastness and tragic issues than any world of imaginary beauty. The “earthly paradise” has taken a new meaning. The song of the Hesperides in Jason had incarnated the romantic spirit in the lines:

	“Let earth and heaven go on their way
	While still we watch from day to day,
	In this green place left all alone,
	A remnant of the days long gone.”

And in the introductory verses to The Earthly Paradise he speaks of himself as striving “to build a shadowy isle of bliss” with “idle verses.” The world of the epic is neither shadowy nor idle.

This transforming influence originally shows itself in the Earthly Paradise itself. The Lovers of Gudrun is in a wholly different key from the rest of the stories. A close rendering, in its substance, of the prose Laxdæla-saga, it has a new poetic vitality and nobility: it is the central point of Morris’s poetry. The expansion of this movement in Sigurd took the form of a fresh epic rendering of the Völsunga-saga, the story of the North which stands alongside of the story of Troy as one of the two great epic subjects of the world. For the reshaping of this story Morris adopted a metrical form which until then had only been used in English on a small scale, the six-beat rhymed couplet, in long lines with free syncopation, and a marked caesura or break of rhythm in the middle of each line. It corresponds, in his handling, more nearly than any other English measure to the effective value of the Homeric hexameter; and makes Sigurd, in this respect as well as in others, the most Homeric poem since Homer. The opening line, “There was a dwelling of kings ere the world was waxen old,” strikes the new note at once with complete certainty. Very often, in lines like

	“And so when the deed is ready, nowise the man shall lack,
	But the wary foot is the surest, and the hasty oft turns back,”

or

	“How then in the gates of Valhall shall the door of the gleaming ring
	Clash to on the heel of Sigurd, as I follow on my king?”

it rises with effortless ease, and without any sense of imitation, into the authentic and unsurpassable Homeric tone.

The constructional quality of Morris’s genius, in so far as it was not hampered by loyalty to the exact scope and lines of a Saga which had not wholly purged itself from barbarism, here reaches its climax. After Sigurd, his poetry shows, amid many fresh experiments and with a continued refinement of beauty, a reversion towards romance, and a renewal, in a new manner and on a different class of subject, of the lyrical impulse. This had always been one strand in the complex fabric of his main production. The lyrics in Jason and The Earthly Paradise, beyond their effect in accentuation of the narrative, are, like the intercalated lyrics in Tennyson’s Princess, substantive poems. Love is Enough is a lyrical fabric wrought by extreme artifice into a dramatic framework. In Sigurd the two elements wholly coalesce, and the lyrical quality tells throughout, not by any sharp division, but by the varying scale of emotional tension. In subsequent work he resumes the pure lyric, often incorporated with the ballad structure. Some of the later pieces collected in Poems by the Way are Morris’s last, and in one view even his supreme poetical achievement. For here, as in Shakespeare’s romances, we reach a final simplicity, not the innocent simplicity of youth, but that of an accomplished art which, after its labours, relaxes itself in work which, to it, is play, and in which the decoration and the substance which it decorates become one and the same thing.

Comparisons between poets are generally futile. In Morris’s poetry we may be content to mark its actual notes of simplicity and sincerity, melodiousness and copiousness, and, after he had “found himself,” a growing and fundamental sanity. His own straightforward simplicity reflects itself in the clarity of verse in which the expression is never involved, the meaning never in doubt. What are called his mannerisms were his natural and instinctive way of expressing himself. His melodiousness, as distinct from more complex harmonies, is unfailing and perhaps unsurpassed. His copiousness, perhaps excessive, came of the joy of a craftsman in pouring out the products of his craft. The quality of his poetry varies, not as in Wordsworth according to the degree of “inspiration” that vitalizes patterns of language in which the craftsman’s touch is fumbling, but rather according to the substantive value of the thought or incident or emotion upon which, whatever it be, he expends the same gift of capable workmanship. As it advances, his poetry passes from broken gleams and a bewildered questioning into a serious interpretation of life. In the earlier work, the obsession of death is a constant background; gradually this is swallowed up in a mastering sense of the wonderfulness of life. The turning-point is vividly indicated in that stanza of “apology” which ends with the single line that beyond all others of his has passed into universal currency.

	“Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
	I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
	Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
	Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
	Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
	Or hope again for aught that I can say,
	The idle singer of an empty day.”

It is an estimate, a criticism, of all his own poetry up till then. The whole “message” (if such a word can be used) of his poetry thereafter, as of his work in other fields than poetry, was the exact converse: to show how this world is heaven or hell; to ease its burden by teaching men not to fear shadows; to make death merge in the splendor of life; to bring back pleasure to an age that had lost or forgotten it; and to give the world the courage of a new hope. This was his work, whether it took shape in lyric or romance or epic, in refashioning of old tales or re-embodying of primary emotions, in a ballad of the greenwood or a vignette of landscape or a chant for Socialists: this was what he would have claimed as his title to remembrance, rather than that he had given to the English world a body of poetry which combines the pellucidity of Chaucer with the fluent richness of Ariosto.

Critical reputation

3 years after Morris's death, his biographer John William Mackail (the husband of Burne-Jones's daughter Margaret and so a member of his immediate circle) summed up his career for the Dictionary of National Biography in a quote that is markedly prescient in its assessment:

The fame of Morris during his life was probably somewhat obscured by the variety of his accomplishments. In all his work after he reached mature life there is a marked absence of extravagance, of display, of superficial cleverness or effectiveness, and an equally marked sense of composition and subordination. Thus his poetry is singularly devoid of striking lines or phrases, and his wall-papers and chintzes only reveal their full excellence by the lastingness of the satisfaction they give. His genius as a pattern-designer is allowed by all qualified judges to have been unequalled. This, if anything, he himself regarded as his specific profession; it was under the designation of "designer" that he enrolled himself in the socialist ranks and claimed a position as one of the working class. And it is the quality of design which, together with a certain fluent ease, distinguishes his work in literature as well as in industrial art. It is yet too early to forecast what permanent place he may hold among English poets. "The Defence of Guenevere" had a deep influence on a limited audience. With "Jason" and the "Earthly Paradise" he attained a wide popularity: and these poems, appearing as they did at a time when the poetic art in England seemed narrowing into mere labour on a thrice-ploughed field, not only gave a new scope, range, and flexibility to English rhymed verse, but recovered for narrative poetry a place among the foremost kinds of the art. A certain diffuseness of style may seem to be against their permanent life, so far as it is not compensated by a uniform wholesomeness and sweetness which indeed marks all Morris’s work. In "Sigurd the Volsung" Morris appears to have aimed higher than in his other poems, but not to have reached his aim with the same certainty; and his own return afterwards from epic to romance may indicate that the latter was the ground on which he was most at home. The prose romances of his later years have so far proved less popular in themselves than in the dilutions they have suggested to other writers. Here as elsewhere Morris’s great effect was to stimulate the artistic sense and initiate movements. So likewise it was with his political and social work. Much of it was not practical in the ordinary sense; but it was based on principles and directed towards ideals which have had a wide and profound influence over thought and practice.

From a later perspective, Stansky concludes that:

Morris's views on the environment, on preserving what is of value in both the natural and "built" worlds, on decentralising bloated government, are as significant now as they were in Morris's own time, or even more so. Earlier in the twentieth century, much of his thinking, particularly its political side, was dismissed as sheer romanticism. After the Second World War, it appeared that modernisation, centralisation, industrialism, rationalism – all the faceless movements of the time – were in control and would take care of the world. Today, when we have a keen sense of the shambles of their efforts, the suggestions which Morris made in his designs, his writings, his actions and his politics have new power and relevance.

Today, Morris's poetry is little read. His fantasy romances languished out of print for decades until their rediscovery amid the fantasy revival of the late 1960s following the phenomenal success of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. But his textile and wallpaper designs remain a staple of the Arts and Crafts Revival of the turn of the 21st century, and the reproduction of Morris designs as fabric, wrapping paper, and craft kits of all sorts is testament to the enduring appeal of his work. The William Morris Societies in Britain, the US, and Canada are active in preserving Morris's work and ideas.

Decorative arts

Cabbage and vine tapestry, 1879. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Furnishing textiles were an important offering of the firm in all its incarnations. By 1883, Morris wrote "Almost all the designs we use for surface decoration, wallpapers, textiles, and the like, I design myself. I have had to learn the theory and to some extent the practice of weaving, dyeing and textile printing: all of which I must admit has given me and still gives me a great deal of enjoyment."

Morris's preference for flat use of line and color and abhorrence of "realistic" 3-dimensional shading was marked; in this he followed the propositions of Owen Jones as set out in his 'The Grammar of Ornament' of 1856, a copy of which Morris owned. Writing on tapestry weaving, Morris said:

As in all wall-decoration, the 1st thing to be considered in the designing of Tapestry is the force, purity, and elegance of the silhouette of the objects represented, and nothing vague or indeterminate is admissible. But special excellences can be expected from it. Depth of tone, richness of colour, and exquisite gradation of tints are easily to be obtained in Tapestry; and it also demands that crispness and abundance of beautiful detail which was the especial characteristic of fully developed Mediæval Art.

It is likely that much of Morris's preference for medieval textiles was formed — or crystallised — during his brief apprenticeship with G. E. Street. Street had co-written a book on Ecclesiastical Embroidery in 1848, and was a staunch advocate of abandoning faddish woolen work on canvas in favour of more expressive embroidery techniques based on Opus Anglicanum, a surface embroidery technique popular in medieval England.

He was also very fond of hand knotted Persian carpets and advised the South Kensington Museum in the acquisition of fine Kerman carpets.

Embroidery

Morris taught himself embroidery, working with wool on a frame custom-built from an old example. Once he had mastered the technique he trained his wife Jan, her sister Bessie Burden, and others to execute designs to his specifications. "Embroideries of all kinds" were offered through Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. catalogues, and church embroidery became and remained an important line of business for its successor companies into the 20th century. By the 1870s, the firm was offering both designs for embroideries and finished works. Following in Street's footsteps, Morris became active in the growing movement to return originality and mastery of technique to embroidery, and was one of the 1st designers associated with the Royal School of Art Needlework with its aim to "restore Ornamental Needlework for secular purposes to the high place it once held among decorative arts."

Textiles

File:Morris Tulip and Willow design 1873.jpg

Design for "Tulip and Willow" indigo-discharge wood-block printed fabric, 1873

Morris's 1st repeating pattern for wallpaper is dated 1862, but was not manufactured until 1864. All his wallpaper designs were manufactured for him by Jeffrey & Co, a commercial wallpaper maker. In 1868 he designed his 1st pattern specifically for fabric printing. As in so many other areas that interested him, Morris chose to work with the ancient technique of hand woodblock printing in preference to the roller printing which had almost completely replaced it for commercial uses.

Morris took up the practical art of dyeing as a necessary adjunct of his manufacturing business. He spent much of his time at Staffordshire dye works mastering the processes of that art and making experiments in the revival of old or discovery of new methods. One result of these experiments was to reinstate indigo dyeing as a practical industry and generally to renew the use of those vegetable dyes, like madder, which had been driven almost out of use by the anilines. Dyeing of wools, silks, and cottons was the necessary preliminary to what he had much at heart, the production of woven and printed fabrics of the highest excellence; and the period of incessant work at the dye-vat (1875–76) was followed by a period during which he was absorbed in the production of textiles (1877–78), and more especially in the revival of carpet-weaving as a fine art. However, his 1st carpet designs of 1875, were made for him industrially by commercial firms using machinery.

Morris's patterns for woven textiles, some of which were also machine made under ordinary commercial conditions, included intricate double-woven furnishing fabrics in which two sets of warps and wefts are interlinked to create complex gradations of colour and texture. His textile designs are still popular today, sometimes recoloured for modern sensibilities, but also in the original colourways.

Tapestry

Morris long dreamed of weaving tapestries in the medieval manner, which he called "the noblest of the weaving arts." In September 1879 he finished his 1st solo effort, a small piece called "Cabbage and Vine". Shortly thereafter Morris trained his employee John Henry Dearle in the technique, setting up a tapestry loom at Queen Square and later a large tapestry works at Merton Abbey.

Recognition

File:WilliamMorrisTombstone.JPG

Morris family tombstone at Kelmscott, designed by Philip Webb

Monuments

A fountain located in Bexleyheath town centre, named the Morris Fountain, was created in his honour and unveiled on the anniversary of his birth. Also in Bexleyheath, Morris' home Red House was opened up to the public by the National Trust in 2004.

Walthamstow Central tube station has William Morris-inspired motifs (by Julia Black) in regularly spaced alcoves along the platform walls.

Collections/museums

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Main Entrance to Kelmscott Manor

A number of galleries and museums house important collections of Morris's work and decorative items commissioned from Morris & Co. The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, England, is a public museum devoted to Morris' life, work and influence. The collection, which is of international significance, includes printed, woven and embroidered fabrics, rugs, carpets, wallpapers, furniture, stained glass and painted tiles by Morris and his associates. In April 2007, The Guardian newspaper reported that funding for the Gallery was threatened by cost cutting by the London borough of Waltham Forest. A campaign to avoid the reduction in opening times and dismissal of key staff was launched. Since then, the Gallery has secured £1.523 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, matched by £1.5 million from the London Borough of Waltham Forest, to renovate and extend the Gallery. Further funding has been secured from charitable trusts and foundations and through an ongoing public fundraising campaign. When the Gallery reopens in July 2012, more of the collection will be on display. The William Morris Gallery Development Project will also deliver a dedicated learning and research space, a new temporary exhibition gallery, a new shop and tea room and a varied activities and events programme.

The former "green dining room" at the Victoria and Albert Museum is now its "Morris Room". The V&A's British Galleries house other decorative works by Morris and his associates.

Wightwick Manor in the West Midlands, England, is a notable example of the Morris & Co. style, with original Morris wallpapers and fabrics, De Morgan tiles, and Pre-Raphaelite works of art, managed by the National Trust. Standen in West Sussex, England, was designed by Webb between 1892 and 1894 and decorated with Morris carpets, fabrics and wallpapers. Morris's homes Red House and Kelmscott Manor have been preserved. Red House was acquired by the National Trust in 2003 and is open to the public by advanced reservation. Kelmscott Manor is owned by the Society of Antiquaries of London, and is open to the public.

The Art Gallery of South Australia is "fortunate in holding the most comprehensive collection of Morris & Co. furnishings outside Britain". The collection includes books, embroideries, tapestries, fabrics, wallpapers, drawings & sketches, furniture and stained glass, and forms the focus of two published works (produced to accompany special exhibitions).

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, acquired the collection of Morris materials amassed by Sanford and Helen Berger in 1999. The collection includes stained glass, wallpaper, textiles, embroidery, drawings, ceramics, more than 2000 books, original woodblocks, and the complete archives of both Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. and Morris & Co. These materials formed the foundation for the 2002 exhibition William Morris: Creating the Useful and the Beautiful and 2003 exhibition The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the Art of Design and accompanying publication.

Publications

Poetry

• The Defence of Guinevere, and other poems. London: Bell & Daldy, 1858; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1891
  • (edited by Margaret Lourie). New York & London: Garland Press, 1981.
• The Life and Death of Jason: A poem. London: Bell & Daldy, 1867; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1895.
• The Earthly Paradise: A poem (Parts I & II). London: F.S. Ellis, 1868.
• The Earthly Paradise: A poem (Parts I-III). London: F.S. Ellis, 1870 [1869]
• The Earthly Paradise: A poem (Parts I-IV). London: F.S. Ellis, 1890.
• The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs. London: Ellis & White, 1877; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1898.
• Chants for Socialists. London: Socialist League Office, 1885.
• A Selection from the Poems. Leipig: Tuchnitz, 1886.
• Alfred Linnell: A death song (pamphlet). London: 1887.
• Poems by the Way. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1891.
• The Earthly Paradise. (8 volumes), Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1896-97.
• Poetical Works. London ; New York: Longmans, Green, 1902-1908.
• The Pilgrims of Hope. London: Longmans, Green, 1915.
• The Story of Cupid and Psyche (with wood-engravings by Edward Burne-Jones). London: Clover Hill Editions, 1974.
• A Book of Verse: Written in London, 1870 (facsimile of calligraphic MS). London: Scolar Press, 1980.
• Selected Poems (edited by Peter Faulkner). London: Routledge, 2002.

Plays

• Love is Enough; or, The freeing of Pharamond: A morality. London: Ellis & White, 1873; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1898.
• The Tables Turned; or, Nupkins awakened: A socialist interlude. London: Office of The Commonweal, 1887
  • (edited by Pamela Wiens). Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1994.

Novels

• News from Nowhere; or, An epoch of rest. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1890; London: Reeves and Turner, 1891; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1893
  • also published as News From Nowhere; or, An epoch of rest: Being some chapters from a utopian romance. London: Longmans, Green, 1918
  • News from Nowhere (edited by Krishan Kumar). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• The Story of the Glittering Plain: Which has been also called the land of living men or the acre of the undying. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1891; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1894.
• The Wood Beyond the World. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1894; London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1895.
• Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1895.
• The Well at the World's End. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1896.
• The Water of the Wondrous Isles. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1897.
• The Sundering Flood. London: Longmans, Green, 1898; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1898.
• The Novel on Blue Paper (unfinished; edited by Penelope Fitzgerald). London: Journeyman Press, 1982.
• The Widow's House by the Great Water (unfinished earely draft of The Water of the Wondrous Isles; edited by Helen Timo). Iowa City. IA: William Morris Society in the United States, 1990.

Short fiction

• A Dream of John Ball / A King's Lesson. London: Reeves & Turner, 1888; Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1892.
• The Roots of the Mountains: Wherein Is told somewhat of the lives of the men of Burgdale, their friends, their neighbours, their foemen, and their fellows in arms. London: Reeves & Turner, 1890.
• Golden Wings, and other stories (with introduction by Alfred Noyes). Vn Nuy, CA: Newcastle, 1976.

Non-fiction

• The Decorative Arts: Their relation to modern life and progress. London: Ellis & White, 1878.
• Hopes and Fears for Art. London: Ellis & White, 1882.
• Art and Socialism: A lecture delivered before the Secular Society of Leicester. London: W. Reeves / Manchester, UK: Heywoods, 1884.
• Textile Fabrics: A lecture. London: William Clowes, 1884.
• A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (with H.M. Hyndman). London: Modern Press, 1884.
• The Manifesto of the Socialist League. London: Socialist League Office, 1885.
• Useful Work versus Useless Toil. London: Socialist League Office, 1886.
• The Aims of Art. London: Office of The Commonweal, 1887.
• True and False Society. London: Socialist League Office, 1888.
• Signs of Change: Seven lectures delivered on various occasions. London: Reeves & Turner, 1888.
• Monopoly; or, How labour is robbed. London: Office of The Commonweal, 1890.
• Gothic Architecture: A lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1893.
• Socialism: Its growth and outcome (with E. Belfort Bax). London: S. Sonnenschein / New York: Scribner, 1893.
• Letters on Socialism. London: privately published by Thomas J. Wise, 1894.
• Art and the Beauty of the Earth. London: Longmans, 1898.
• A Note on His Aims on Founding the Kelmscott Press. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1898
  • (edited by William S. Peterson). New York: Grolier Club / William Morris Society in the United States, 1996..
• Some Hints on Pattern-Designing. London: Longmans, 1899.
• Architecture and History, and Westminster Abbey. London: Longmans, 1900.
• Art and Its Producers / The Arts and Crafts of To-day: Two addresses delivered before the National Association for the Advancement of Art. London: Longmans, 1901.
• Architecture, Industry, and Wealth. London: Longmans, Green, 1902.
• Communism: A lecture. London: Fabian Society (Fabian Tracts, 113), 1903.
• The Hollow Land (contributions to the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856). London: Longmans, Green, 1903.
• Some Thoughts on the Ornamented Manuscripts of the Middle Ages (lecture probably written in 1892). New York: Press of the Woolly Whale, 1934.
• The Unpublished Lectures of William Morris (edited by Eugene D. LeMire). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1969.
• Political Writings: Contributions to 'Justice' and 'Commonweal' (edited by Nicholas Salmon). London: Thoemmes Press, 1994.
• William Morris on Art and Socialism (edited by Norman Kelvin). New York: Dover, 1999.

Translated

• Grettis Saga: The Story of Grettir the Strong (translated with Eiríkr Magnússon). London: F.S. Ellis, 1869.
• The Saga of Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue and Raven the Skald (translated with Eiríkr Magnússon). in Fortnightly Review (1869); London: Chiswick Press, 1891.
• Völsung Saga: The story of the Volsungs and Niblungs; with certain songs from the Elder Edda (translated with Eiríkr Magnússon). London: Ellis, 1870.
• Three Northern Love Stories, and other tales (translated with Eiríkr Magnússon). London: Ellis & White, 1875.
• Virgil, The Aeneids of Virgil: Done into English. London: Ellis & White, 1876.
• Homer, The Odyssey of Homer: Done into English verse (2 volumes), London: Reeves & Turner, 1887.
• The Saga Library (translated with Eirikr Magnusson). (6 volumes), London: Bernard Quaritch, 1891-1905.
• Of King Florus and the Fair Jehane. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1893.
• The Order of Chivalry = L'Ordere de chevalerie. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1893.
• The Tale of the Emperor Coustans and of Over Sea. Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1894.
• The Tale of Beowulf: Done out of the Old English tongue (translated with A.J. Wyatt). Hammersmith, UK: Kelmscott Press, 1895.
• Old French Romances Done into English (with introduction by Joseph Jacobs). London: George Allen, 1896.
• The Story of Kormak, the Son of Ogmund (translated with Eirikr Magnusson; with introduction by Grace J. Calder). London: William Morris Society, 1970.

Edited

• The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (literary magazine), 1-12 (January - December, 1856). London: Bell & Daldy, 1856.

Collected editions

• A Tale of the House of the Wolfings, and All the Kindreds of the Mark: Written in prose and in verseLondon: Reeves and Turner, 1889.
• Collected Works (edited by May Morris). (24 volumes), London & New York: Longmans, Green, 1910-1915. Vol. 1: The Defence of Guenevere. Vol. 2: The Life and Death of Jason. Vol. 3: The Earthly Paradise [Part 1]. Vol. 4: The Earthly Paradise [Part 2]. Vol. 5: The Earthly Paradise [Part 3]. Vol. 6: The Earthly Paradise [Part 4]. Vol. 7: Grettis Saga; Volsunga Saga. Vol. 8: Icelandic Journals. Vol. 9: Love Is Enough; Poems by the Way. Vol. 10: Three Northern Love Stories; The Tale of Beowulf. Vol. 11: The Æneids of Virgil. Vol. 12: The Story of Sigurd the Volsung. Vol. 13: The Odyssey of Homer. Vol. 14: The House of the Wolfings; The Story of the Glittering Plain Vol. 15: The Roots of the Mountains. Vol. 16: News from Nowhere; A Dream of John Ball; A King's Lesson. Vol. 17: The Wood Beyond the World; Child Christopher; Old French Romances. Vol. 18: The Well at the World's End [Part 1]. Vol. 19: The Well at the World's End [Part 2]. Vol. 20: The Water of the Wondrous Isles. Vol. 21: The Sundering Flood; unfinished romances. Vol. 22: Hopes and Fears for Art; lectures on art and industry.Vol. 23: Signs of Change; lectures on Socialism. Vol. 24: The Story of the Fall of Troy; other poems and fragments not previously published
  • (24 volumes), Adamant Media (Elibron Classics Replica Edition), 2005.
• Prose and Poetry (1856-1870). London & New York: Humphrey Milford for Oxford University Press, 1915.
• Stories in Prose, Stories in Verse, Shorter Poems, Letters and Essays (edited by G.D.H. Cole). London: Nonesuch Press, 1934.
• William Morris: Artist, writer, socialist (edited by May Morris). (2 volumes), Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1936.
• Juvenilia (edited by Florence Boos). New York: William Morris Society in the United States, 1983.
• News from Nowhere, and other writings (edited by Clive Wilmer). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1994.
• The William Morris Library (edited by Peter Faulkner, et al.) (6 volumes), Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1996. Arts and Crafts Essays (edited by Peter Faulkner); Political Writings: Contributions to 'Justice' and 'Commonweal' (edited by Nicholas Salmon); Three Northern Love Stories (edite by Gay Aho); The Story of the Glittering Plain and Child Christopher (edited by Norman Talbot); Journalism: Contributions to 'Commonweal' (edited by Nicholas Salmon); The Hollow Land (edited by Eugene LeMire).

Letters and journals

• Icelandic Journals (with introduction by James Morris). Fontwell: Centaur Press, 1969; New York: Praeger, 1970
  • (with foreword by Magnus Magnusson & introducton by Fiona MacCarthy). London: Mare's Nest, 1986.
• Socialist Diary (edited by Florence S. Boos). Iowa City: Windhover Press, 1981.
• Collected Letters (edited by Norman Kelvin). (4 volumes in 5), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984-1996.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the William Morris Society in the United States.

See also

The Poetry of William Morris (Sample)

Summer Dawn a poem written by William Morris

Love is Enough William Morris Audiobook Wedding Poems

• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

References

•  Waugh, Arthur (1911). "Morris, William". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 871-873.  Wikisource, Web, Oct. 13, 2020.
• Carpenter, Humphrey, Tolkien: A Biography, New York, Ballantine Books, 1977, ISBN 0-04-928037-6
• Coote, Stephen, William Morris: His Life and Work, Smithmark Publishers, 1995, ISBN 1-85833-479-9
• Daly, Gay, Pre-Raphaelites in Love, New York, Ticknor & Fields, 1989, ISBN 0-89919-450-8
• de Camp, L. Sprague, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, ISBN 0-87054-076-9
• Fairclough, Oliver and Emmeline Leary, Textiles by William Morris and Morris & Co. 1861–1940, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1981, ISBN 0-89860-065-0
• Fiell, Charlotte and Peter, William Morris Cologne, Taschen, 1999 ISBN 3-8228-6617-2.
• Hammond, Wayne and Christina Scull, The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, ISBN 978-0-618-39113-4
• Kelvin Norman ed. The Collected Letters of William Morris Princeton University Press 1985 ISBN 978 069 1065014
• John William Mackail, The Life of William Morris. (2 volumes), London, New York & Bombay: Longmans, Green, 1899.
• Template:Cite DNB01 Wikisource, Web, Oct. 12, 2020.
  • Google Books edition of Volume I and Volume II (1911 reprint) retrieved 16 August 2008
• Mackail, J. W., "William Morris," in The Dictionary of National Biography. Supp. vol. 3 (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1901), p. 197–203, reproduced at the William Morris Society
• Menz, Christopher, Morris and Company: Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts & Crafts Movement Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 1994 ISBN 0730830403
• \ Menz, Christopher, Morris & Co. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 2002 ISBN 0730830292
• Parry, Linda, "Textiles", in The Earthly Paradise: Arts and Crafts by Wiliam Morris and his Circle in Canadian Collections, edited by Katharine A. Lochnan, Douglas E. Schoenherr, and Carole Silver, Key Porter Books, 1993, ISBN 1-55013-450-7
• Parry, Linda, ed., William Morris, Abrams, 1996, ISBN 0-8109-4282-8
• Parry, Linda, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement: A Sourcebook, New York, Portland House, 1989 ISBN 0-517-69260-0
• Parry, Linda, William Morris Textiles, New York, Viking Press, 1983, ISBN 0-670-77074-4
• Parry, Linda, Textiles of the Arts & Crafts Movement, Thames and Hudson, revised edition 2005, ISBN 0-500-28536-5
• Stansky, Peter (1983). William Morris. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019287571X. 
• Peterson, William S., A bibliography of the Kelmscott Press. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. ISBN 0-19-818199-X
• Peterson, William S., The Kelmscott Press: a history of William Morris's typographical adventure. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. ISBN 0-19-812887-8
• Reason, Robert, Morris & Co. designs and patterns Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2003 ISBN 978 073 0830375
• Salmon, Nick, The William Morris Chronology, Thoemmes Press 1996 ISBN 1855065045 (online version also by Nick Salmon)
• Thompson, E.P. (2nd edition, 1976) William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, Pantheon, ISBN 0-394-73320-7
• Todd, Pamela, Pre-Raphaelites at Home, New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001. ISBN 0-8230-4285-5
• Waggoner, Diane, The Beauty of Life: William Morris & the Art of Design, Thames and Hudson, 2003, ISBN 0-500-28434-2
• Anonymous (1873). Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day. Illustrated by Frederick Waddy. London: Tinsley Brothers. pp. 28–29. http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Cartoon_portraits_and_biographical_sketches_of_men_of_the_day/William_Morris. Retrieved 2011-01-06. 
• Arscott, Caroline. William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press (Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art), 2008). ISBN 978-0-300-14093-4
• Freudenheim, Leslie. Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home (Gibbs Smith 2005 ) ISBN 978-1-58685-463-8.
• Goodway, David. Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow: Left Libertarian Thought and English Writers From William Morris to Colin Ward (2006).
• MacCarthy, Fiona (1994). William Morris: A Life For Our Time. London: Faber. ISBN 0571174957. 
• Marsh, Jan (2005). William Morris and Red House: A Collaboration Between Architect and Owner. National Trust Books. ISBN 9781905400010. 
• Pinkney, Tony. William Morris in Oxford: The Campaigning Years, 1879–1895 (2007).
• Robinson, Duncan (1982). William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and the Kelmscott Chaucer. London: Gordon Fraser. 
• Thompson, E.P. (1976; first published, 1955). William Morris, Romantic to Revolutionary. London: Merlin. 
• Watkinson, Ray (1990). William Morris as Designer. London: Trefoil Books. ISBN 0862940400. 

External links

Poems

• William Morris at the Academy of American Poets (2 poems)
• 5 poems by Morris: "Late February," "February," "March," "The Message of the March Wind," "Summer Dawn"
• Morris in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "The Gillyflower of Gold," "Shameful Death," "The Blue Closet"
  • from The Earthly Paradise: I. "The Singer's Prelude", II. "Atalanta's Victory", III. Atalanta's Defeat", IV. "The King's Visit", V. "Song: To Psyche", VI. A Land acrosss the Sea, VII. Antiphony
  • from Sigurd the Volsung: I. "Of the Passing Away of Brynhild", II. "The Burghers’ Battle", III. "A Death Song"
• Morris, William (1834-1896) (15 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• William Morris at Poets' Corner (19 poems)
• Morris in The English Poets: An anthology: "The Hollow Land," "Summer Dawn"
  • from The Defence of Guenevere: Launcelot and Guenevere (from King Arthur’s Tomb), Ladies’ Gard (from Golden Wings)
  • from The Lie and Death of Jason: A Sweet Song Sung Not Yet to Any Man, Orpheus Sings to the Argonauts, The Song of the Hesperides, Medea at Corinth
  • from The Earthly Paradise: Apology, Michael’s Ride (from The Man born to be King), The Castle on the Island (from The Lady of the Land), The Hosting of the Fiends (from The Ring given to Venus), February, The Book Speaks to Chaucer, The Land of the Dream
  • from Love is Enough: The Music, The Return Home
  • from Sigurd the Volsung: Sigurd on Hindfell, The Wisdom of Brynhild, Gunnar's Death Song
  • from Poems by the Way: Mother and Son, Young Love, The Day is Coming, Thunder in the Garden, The Flowering Orchard
• William Morris at PoemHunter (102 poems)
• William Morris at Poetry Nook (172 poems)

Art

• William Morris Stained Glass
• William Morris at Art Passions
• William Morris - The Soul of Arts and Crafts

Audio / video

• William Morris at YouTube

Books

• Works by William Morris at sacred-texts.com, including full text of The Earthly Paradise
• Works by William Morris at Project Gutenberg
• Works by William Morris at Internet Archive
• William Morris at the Online Books Page
• William Morris at Amazon.com
• William Morris at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

About

• William Morris in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• William Morris at NNDB
• William Morris at Spartacus Educational
• William Morris at the Victoria & Albert Museum
• Morris, William in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1901)
• "William Morris", Stephen Gwynn in Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. LXXVIII, May to Oct., 1898, pp. 153–160
• William Morris and his Circle
• William Morris at the Victorian Web
• The William Morris Internet Archive (marxists.org)
• Critical introduction by John William Mackail in The English Poets, 1880-1901
• review of The Poetical Works in The Spectator
• "A Study of the Color and Imagery of the Poetry of William Morris"

Etc.

• The William Morris Gallery (London Borough of Waltham Forest)
• The William Morris Society in the United States
• William Morris online exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
• Examples of pages from the Kelmscott Chaucer

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Morris, William