
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The Simple Life (1981) was Fiona MacCarthy's first book, written while she was the
Guardian's design correspondent (and before her acclaimed lives of Eric Gill, William Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones.) It tells of a venturesome effort to enact an Edwardian Utopia in a small town in the Cotswolds.
The leader of this endeavour was progressive-minded architect Charles Robert Ashbee, who in 1888 founded the Guild of Handicraft in Whitechapel, specialising in metalworking, jewellery and furniture and informed by the desire to improve society. In 1902 Ashbee and his East London comrades removed the Guild to Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, hoping to construct a socialistic rural idyll. MacCarthy explores the impact of the experiment on the lives of the group and on the little town they occupied - tracing the Guild's fortunes and misfortunes, hilarious and grave, and the many fellow idealists and artists who were involved (among them William Morris, Roger Fry, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb.)
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Landing Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface to the 2014 Edition
- Prologue
- 1: From Whitechapel to Camelot 1888 to 1901
- 2: Cockneys in Arcadia 1902
- 3: The Building of the City 1903
- 4: The Jolly Craftsmenâs Chorus 1904
- 5: The Song of Giles Cockbill 1905
- 6: The Guildâs Three âPrentices 1906
- 7: The Death of Conradin 1907
- 8: Echoes from the City 1908 onwards
- Sources and Select Bibliography
- Index
- Plates
- Copyright