William Morris was a British artist, writer, and socialist activist who co-founded the Arts and Crafts movement and the Socialist League. He attended Marlborough College and Oxford University, and with four other men founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Morris believed in handcrafted home furnishings and architectural objects at affordable prices. He wrote several poems and fantasy novels, including The Earthly Paradise, and was offered the Poet Laureate position but declined. Morris married Jane Burden and had two daughters. Morris and Company produced hand-made decorative products, including a stained glass window in Boston. He founded the Socialist League in 1884 and was one of the first British socialists. Morris died in 1896.
William Morris was born on March 24, 1834 in North East London in a town called Walthamstow. He is known for his art and writing, as well as his socialist political activism. William Morris was instrumental in creating both the Arts and Crafts movement and the Socialist League in Britain.
William Morris attended Wiltshire boarding school, Marlborough College, and Exeter College of the University of Oxford. Together with Dante Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb and Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris founded the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and designed artisanal and fine art fabrics and wallpaper. Together, the five men were the Brotherhood, or Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The underlying artistic philosophy of the Brotherhood is that home furnishings and architectural objects should be handcrafted at affordable prices rather than industrially produced at low cost. The Brotherhood also established a literary magazine, but William Morris also had some of his writings published outside the magazine. His first poem published outside his magazine, The Defense of Guenevere, in 1858 was not widely acclaimed at the time, but his The Haystack in the Floods was well received and is well remembered to this day.
However, it was William Morris’s great collection of poems, called The Earthly Paradise, which proved to be his literary crowning achievement and made him a well-known name in literary circles. When Alfred Lord Tennyson died in 1892, William Morris was chosen to receive the Poet Laureate, but Morris decided not to accept it. William Morris is also known for writing several fantasy novels and one titled The House of the Wolfings inspired by the fantasy novelist JRR Tolkien.
William Morris married Jane Burden, model for Dante Rossetti. Jane and Rossetti have had a long relationship. William Morris and Jane Burden had two daughters, Jane and Mary, known as Jenny and May. At some point the Brotherhood became known as Morris and Company. Morris and Company produced hand-made decorative products such as stained glass and tapestry fabrics. William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones created a beautifully detailed stained glass window in 1882, David’s Charge to Solomon, which became part of Trinity Church in Boston.
In 1883, William Morris became a member of the Democratic Socialist Federation. He single-handedly founded the Socialist League in Great Britain in 1884. William Morris, who died on October 3, 1896, was one of the first British socialists.
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