Morris, William (1834–1896)

The English socialist William Morris, a leading figure of the Arts and Crafts movement, pictured in 1870. His political and artistic convictions were closely linked, and he claimed that art as ‘man's expression of his joy in labour’ was stifled by the squalid industrialism of Victorian England, although only the rich could afford to buy his expensive designs.

English designer, socialist, and writer. A founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement, he condemned 19th-century mechanization and sought a revival of traditional crafts, such as furnituremaking, book illustration, fabric design, and so on. He linked this to a renewal of society based on Socialist principles.

Morris was born in London and educated at Oxford, where he formed a lasting friendship with the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and was influenced by the art critic John Ruskin and the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He abandoned his first profession, architecture, to study painting, but had a considerable influence on such architects as William Lethaby and Philip Webb. In 1861 he cofounded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company (‘the Firm’) which designed and produced stained glass, furniture, fabric, carpets, and decorative wallpapers; many of the designs, inspired by medieval, classical, and oriental sources, are still produced today.

Morris's first book of verse was The Defence of Guenevere (1858). He published several verse romances, notably The Life and Death of Jason (1867) and The Earthly Paradise (1868–70). A visit to Iceland in 1871 inspired the epic poem Sigurd the Volsung (1876) and general interest in the sagas. His Kelmscott Press, set up in 1890 to print beautifully designed books, influenced printing and book design.

A leading Socialist, his prose romances A Dream of John Ball (1888) and utopian News from Nowhere (1891) reflected his socialist ideology. He joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1883, but left in 1884 because he found it too moderate, and set up the Socialist League. To this period belong the critical and sociological studies Signs of Change (1888) and Hopes and Fears for Art (1892). He also lectured on socialism.