William Morris

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and libertarian socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. He founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. As an author, illustrator and medievalist, he helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, and was a direct influence on postwar authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien. He was also a major contributor to reviving traditional textile arts and methods of production, and one of the founders of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, now a statutory element in the preservation of historic buildings in the UK.

Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball (1888), the utopian News from Nowhere (1890), and the fantasy romance The Well at the World's End (1896). He was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with that organization over goals and methods by the end of the decade. He devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. Kelmscott was devoted to the publishing of limited-edition, illuminated-style print books. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.

Read more about William Morris:  Writings, Textiles, The Kelmscott Press

Famous quotes containing the words william morris, william and/or morris:

    I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love.... It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier world?
    William Morris (1834–1896)

    When the Prince of Wales [later King George IV] and the Duke of York went to visit their brother Prince William [later William IV] at Plymouth, and all three being very loose in their manners, and coarse in their language, Prince William said to his ship’s crew, “now I hope you see that I am not the greatest blackguard of my family.”
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

    The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
    —Desmond Morris (b. 1928)