William Morris: A Life for Our Time

Fiona MacCarthy

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571265831
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and described by A.S.Byatt as 'one of the finest biographies ever published', this is Fiona MacCarthy's magisterial biography of William Morris, legendary designer and father of the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement.

'Thrilling, absorbing and majestic.' Independent
'Wonderfully ambitious ... The definitive Morris biography.' Sunday Times
'Delicious and intelligent, full of shining detail and mysteries respected.' Daily Telegraph
' Oh, the careful detail of this marvellous book! . . . A model of scholarly biography'. New Statesman

Since his death in 1896, William Morris has been celebrated as a giant of the Victorian era. But his genius was so multifaceted and so profound that its full extent has rarely been grasped. Many people may find it hard to believe that the greatest English designer of his time - possibly of all time - could also be internationally renowned as a founder of the socialist movement, and ranked as a poet with Tennyson and Browning.

In her definitive biography - insightful, comprehensive, addictively readable - the award-winning Fiona MacCarthy gives us a richly detailed portrait of Morris's complex character for the first time, shedding light on his immense creative powers as artist and designer of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, stained glass, tapestry, and books; his role as a poet, novelist and translator; on his psychology and his emotional life; his frenetic activities as polemicist and reformer; and his remarkable circle of friends, literary, artistic and political, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. It is a masterpiece of biographical art.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• One: Walthamstow 1834–48
• Two: Marlborough 1848–52
• Three: Oxford 1853–55
• Four: Northern France 1855–56
• Five: Red Lion Square 1856–59
• Six: Red House 1859–65
• Seven: Queen Square 1865–69
• Eight: Bad Ems 1869–70
• Nine: Iceland 1871
• Ten: Kelmscott Manor 1871–75
• Eleven: Leek 1875–78
• Twelve: Kelmscott House 1879–81
• Thirteen: Merton Abbey 1881–83
• Fourteen: Westminster Palace Chambers 1883–84
• Fifteen: Farringdon Road, One: 1884–87
• Sixteen: Farringdon Road, Two: 1887–90
• Seventeen: Hammersmith, One: 1890–93
• Eighteen: Hammersmith, Two: 1893–96
• Nineteen: Norway 1896
• Twenty: Return to Kelmscott 1896 and after
• Sources and Reference Notes
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations and Acknowledgements
• Index
• Plates
• About the Author
• Copyright