Timeline
Title
Country/Nationality
William Morris
William Morris was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he helped win acceptance of socialism in fin de siècle Great Britain.
Morris was born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy middle-class family. He came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying Classics at Oxford University, there joining the Birmingham Set. After university, he married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships with Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and with Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed Red House in Kent where Morris lived from 1859 to 1865, before moving to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others, which became highly fashionable and much in demand. The firm profoundly influenced interior decoration throughout the Victorian period, with Morris designing tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, and stained glass windows. In 1875, he assumed total control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co.
Morris rented the rural retreat of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, from 1871 while also retaining a main home in London. He was greatly influenced by visits to Iceland with Eiríkr Magnússon, and he produced a series of English-language translations of Icelandic Sagas. He also achieved success with the publication of his epic poems and novels, namely 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). In 1877, he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to campaign against the damage caused by architectural restoration. He embraced Marxism and was influenced by anarchism in the 1880s and became a committed revolutionary socialist activist. He founded the Socialist League in 1884 after an involvement in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), but he broke with that organisation in 1890. In 1891, he founded the Kelmscott Press to publish limited-edition, illuminated-style print books, a cause to which he devoted his final years.
Morris is recognised as one of the most significant cultural figures of Victorian Britain. He was best known in his lifetime as a poet, although he posthumously became better known for his designs. The William Morris Society founded in 1955 is devoted to his legacy, while multiple biographies and studies of his work have been published. Many of the buildings associated with his life are open to visitors, much of his work can be found in art galleries and museums, and his designs are still in production.
Books by William Morris
The Well at the World's End
The Well at the World's End is a high fantasy novel by the British artist, poet, and author William Morris. It was first published in 1896 and has been reprinted a number of times since, most notably in two parts as the 20th and 21st volumes of the B...
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs is an epic poem of over 10,000 lines by William Morris that tells the tragic story, drawn from the Volsunga Saga and the Elder Edda, of the Norse hero Sigmund, his son Sigurd and Sigurd's w...
The House of the Wolfings
The House of the Wolfings is a romantically reconstructed portrait of the lives of the Germanic Gothic tribes, written in an archaic style and incorporating a large amount of poetry. Morris combines his own idealistic views with what was actually kno...
The Wood Beyond the World
When the wife of Golden Walter betrays him for another man, he leaves home on a trading voyage to avoid the necessity of a feud with her family.
Chants for Socialists
As well as being influential in the Arts and Crafts Movement and writing numerous poems and novels, William Morris was deeply involved in political reform. These poems, the earliest of which were first collected in 1885, reflect his socialist beliefs...
Thunder In The Garden
William Morris was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods o...
Summer Dawn
It is a beautifully crafted poem that captures the essence of a serene and tranquil summer morning. Written in the late 19th century, the poem evokes a sense of peace and tranquility, transporting readers to a world of beauty and wonder. In "Summer...
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair
In a world of magic and adventure, a young boy named Christopher sets out on a quest to find his true home and the love of his life. Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair is a fantasy novel by William Morris, first published in 1885. The novel is...
The Well at the World's End: Book 4: The Road Home
In the climactic fourth installment of William Morris's epic fantasy saga, "The Well at the World's End: Book 4: The Road Home," the fate of Upmeads hangs in the balance as Ralph and his companions face their most daunting challenge yet. With the en...
Inscription for an Old Bed
LibriVox volunteers bring you 11 recordings of Inscription for an Old Bed by William Morris. This was the Weekly Poetry project for June 20th, 2010.
Well at the World's End, Book 1: The Road Unto Love
The Well at the World's End is thought to be one of the first examples of an entirely fictional fantasy world, and has greatly influenced later fantasy writers such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The book follows the travels of Ralph, a prince of...
Echoes of Love’s House
LibriVox volunteers bring you 11 recordings of Echoes of Love’s House by William Morris. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 9th, 2011.William Morris was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Ra...
News From Nowhere
News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In the book, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meetin...
Signs of Change
In the 1880s William Morris, the artist and poet famously associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, left the Liberal Party and threw himself into the Socialist cause. He spoke all over the country, on street corners as well as in working men's cl...
Love is enough
LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of Love is enough by William Morris. This was the Weekly Poetry project for February 17, 2013.William Morris was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and libertarian socialist associated with the P...
Well at the World's End, Book 2: The Road Unto Trouble
In The Well at the World's End, Ralph of Upmeads, youngest son of the King of Upmeads, leaves home (where nothing exciting ever happens) without permission and sets out looking for adventure. When he hears rumors of a well that exudes water with magi...
Well at the World's End: Book 3: The Road to The Well at the World's End
In The Well at the World's End, Ralph of Upmeads, youngest son of the King of Upmeads, leaves home (where nothing exciting ever happens) without permission and sets out looking for adventure. When he hears rumors of a well that exudes water with magi...
Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems
This is a volume of early narrative poems by William Morris, first published in 1858. While at the time of writing the most important stages of William Morris' career are still ahead of him, his ideas are already reflected in many of the poems. Many...
Story of the Glittering Plain
In this early example of the modern high fantasy genre, Hallblithe, a warrior of the House of Raven, sets out in pursuit of the pirates who have kidnapped his troth-plight maiden, the Hostage. Kidnapped himself, Hallblithe sails to the Isle of Ransom...
Prose Romances from the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856)
William Morris initiated the genre of high fantasy in a number of short novels written toward the end of his life. But he had already experimented with the genre much earlier in stories written for the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, which he launched...
Roots of the Mountains
The Roots of the Mountains was the second in a projected series of three historical novels set in a pre-medieval Germanic world (the third was not completed). It follows the themes of House of the Wolfings, which was published in the same year, into...
Spring's Bedfellow
LibriVox volunteers bring you 23 recordings of Spring's Bedfellow by William Morris. This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 2, 2023. ------ This Weekly poem is taken from Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough by William Morris (1907). - Sum...
Old French Romances
Old French Romances is a collection of four medieval romances translated by William Morris and published in 1896. The Tale of King Coustans the Emperor tells the ahistorical and unlikely story of how an abandoned child named Coustans becomes the Byza...
Dream of John Ball
A Dream of John Ball recounts a dream of being transported back in time to 1381 during the Peasants' Revolt as John Ball and an army of peasants prepare to march on London. Morris gives us a beautiful depiction of England during a period of the Middl...