William Morris, News From Nowhere

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Biography

William Morris was born in Walthamstow, Essex, on 24 March 1834. The son of a wealthy businessman, he enjoyed a comfortable childhood before going to Marlborough and Exeter College, Oxford.
He originally intended to take holy orders, but his reading of the social criticism of Carlyle, Kingsley and Ruskin led him to reconsider the Church and devote his life to art.
After leaving Oxford, Morris was briefly articled to G. E. Street, the Gothic Revival architect, but he soon left, having determined to become a painter. His admiration for the Pre-Raphaelites led him to be introduced to Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose influence can be seen on Morris's only surviving painting La Belle Iseult.

Arts and Crafts
In the 1860s Morris decided that his creative future lay in the field of the decorative arts. His career as a designer began when he decorated the Red House, Bexleyheath, which had been built for him by Philip Webb.
The success of this venture led to the formation of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861. The 'Firm' (later renamed Morris & Co) was particularly well-known for its stained glass, examples of which can be seen in churches throughout Britain. Morris produced some 150 designs which are often characterised by their delightful foliage patterns.
Among his many other works were Icelandic and classical translations, Sigurd the Volsung, The Pilgrims of Hope, and a series of prose romances which included A Dream of John Ball, News from Nowhere, and The Well at the World's End.

Politics
Morris entered national politics in 1876 as treasurer of the Eastern Question Association. This was a post he was to occupy in two further radical organisations: the National Liberal League and the Radical Union.
He soon became disillusioned with the Liberals and in 1883 joined the socialist Democratic Federation. After disagreements with the Federation's leader, H M. Hyndman, he formed the Socialist League, and later the Hammersmith Socialist Society.
During the 1880s he was probably the most active propagandist for the socialist cause, giving hundreds of lectures and speeches throughout the country.

The Kelmscott Press
In 1890 Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in premises near his last home at Kelmscott House in Hammersmith (now the headquarters of the William Morris Society). Morris designed three typefaces for the Press: Golden, Chaucer, and Troy. These were inspired respectively by fifteenth-century Italian and German typography. In all, sixty-six volumes were printed by the Kelmscott Press, the most impressive of which was its magnificent edition of Chaucer which was published in 1896. Morris died at Kelmscott House on 3 October 1896.

The Pre-Raphaelites, a group of 19th century English painters, poets, and critics who reacted against Victorian materialism and the outworn neo-classical conventions of academic art by producing earnest quasi-religious works inspired by medieval and early Renaissance painters up to the time of the Italian painter and architect Raphael. They were also influenced by the Nazarenes, young German artists who formed a brotherhood in Rome in 1810 to restore Christian art to its medieval purity.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was established in 1848, and its central figure was the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Other members were his brother, William Michael Rossetti, John Everette Millais, Frederick George Stephens, James Collinson, and Thomas Woolner.

Essentially Christian in outlook, the brotherhood deplored the imitative historical and genre painting of their day. Together they sought to revitalize art through a simpler, more positive vision. In portrait painting, for example, the group eschewed the somber colors and formal structure preferred by the Royal Academy.They found their inspiration in the comparitively sincere and religious, and scrupulously detailed, art of the Middle Ages. Pre-Raphaelite art became distinctive for its blend of archaic, romantic , and materialistic qualities, but much of it has been criticized as superficial and sentimental, if not artificial. Millais eventually left the group, but other artists joined it, including Edward C Burne-Jones and William Morris. The eminent art critic John Ruskin was an ardent supporter of the movement.

"Art and Socialism's outstanding feature is perhaps the stress laid on work as a necessity of human life, not merely as a means of obtaining a livelihood. Morris insists that only Socialism can restore work to its proper, central position." — A. L. Morton.

Morris's Socialism
"During the 1870s Morris, who had previously made a strenuous effort to avoid political entanglements of any sort, made a commitment to increasingly radical political activities which would dominate the rest of his life. It was not so much that he abandoned his previous artistic activities and commitements, but that he extended them: in a real sense his plunge into Socialism was a new attempt to resolve, or at least to provide a framework which would permit the eventual resolution, of the enormous disparities -- disparities which he found he could no longer ignore--which he had always perceived as existing between things as they were and as they should be. He put it very simply: "nothing can argue me out of this feeling," he wrote, "which I say plainly is a matter of religion to me: the contrasts of rich and poor are unendurable and ought not to be endured by either rich or poor."

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