William Morris: life and works

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, translator and socialist activist joined 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 university contributions helped to uphold the forward looking fantasy genre, while he helped win response of socialism in fin de siècle Great Britain.

Morris was born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a rich middle-class family. He came below the strong influence of medievalism even if studying Classics at Oxford University, there joining the Birmingham Set. After university, he married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships in the same way as Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and taking into account Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris intended 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 perfect with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others, which became deeply fashionable and much in demand. The given profoundly influenced interior beautification throughout the Victorian period, with Morris designing tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture and stained glass windows. In 1875, he assumed sum control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co.

Morris rented the rural retreat of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, from 1871 even if also retaining a main house in London. He was greatly influenced by visits to Iceland in the same way as Eiríkr Magnússon, and he produced a series of English-language translations of Icelandic Sagas. He then achieved execution with the revelation 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 considering that organisation in 1890. In 1891, he founded the Kelmscott Press to pronounce limited-edition, illuminated-style print books, a cause to which he devoted his fixed idea 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 greater than before known for his designs. The William Morris Society founded in 1955 is devoted to his legacy, while fused biographies and studies of his achievement have been published. Many of the buildings united with his energy are edit to visitors, much of his accomplishment can be found in art galleries and museums, and his designs are still in production.