This 1987 book investigates the dismissal of William Morris's romances as self-indulgent fantasy, looking at the ways in which our sense of the 'escapism' of Morris's fairy-tale writing can be modified or expanded when seen in relation to the development of his imagination in other spheres, both political and creative.

William Morris (1834–96) was an English poet, decorative artist, translator, romance writer, book designer, preservationist, socialist theorist, and political activist, whose admirers have been drawn to the sheer intensity of his artistic endeavors and efforts to live up to radical ideals of social justice. This Companion draws together historical and critical responses to the impressive range of Morris’s multi-faceted life and activities: his homes, travels, family, business practices, decorative artwork, poetry, fantasy romances, translations, political activism, eco-socialism, and book collecting and design. Each chapter provides valuable historical and literary background information, reviews relevant opinions on its subject from the late-nineteenth century to the present, and offers new approaches to important aspects of its topic. Morris’s eclectic methodology and the perennial relevance of his insights and practice make this an essential handbook for those interested in art history, poetry, translation, literature, book design, environmentalism, political activism, and Victorian and utopian studies.

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, the essential biography of the father of the Arts and Crafts movement. The author, Fiona MacCarthy, is the curator of the National Portrait Gallery's 2014-15 exhibition Anarchy and Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy.'One of the finest biographies ever published in this country' A. S. Byatt Since his death in 1896, William Morris has come to be regarded as one of the giants of the Victorian era. But his genius was so many-sided 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 could have been ranked as a poet together with Tennyson and Browning.With penetrating insight, Fiona MacCarthy has managed to encompass all the different facets of Morris's complex character, shedding light on his immense creative powers as artist and designer of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, stained glass, tapestry and books, and as a poet, novelist and translator; 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. Fiona MacCarthy's skilful drawing together of these disparate elements makes for a comprehensive and compelling biography.

Blackthorn, on the lined notebook of the set, was designed by John Henry Dearle and printed by Jeffrey & Co. as a wallpaper sample for Morris & Co. in 1892. Dearle also designed the Golden Lily wallpaper pattern, 1880-1917, used for the continental grid style journal, and Seaweed, from the 1890s, used for the blank paper notebook. All three wallpaper samples are in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

A groundbreaking fantasy novel, The Wood Beyond the World tells the story of a young man, Golden Walter, who finds himself in a strange and frightening world after being abandoned by his wife and lost at sea. The novel takes the form of Walter’s quest for the visionary Maid that he sees at the beginning of his journey, and takes him from his failed marriage through temptation to emotional fulfillment. Set in Morris’s imaginative recreation of a medieval world, the novel is full of vivid imagery and surprising emotional realism. This edition collates for the first time the three early texts of the work. The introduction discusses the place of the book among Morris’s other prose romances, the events of his life, and his activities as a visual artist and a socialist. The appendices provide excerpts from Morris’s translation of Beowulf, other medieval texts read by Morris, and writings by his contemporaries on politics and aesthetics.

This 24-volume set, published 1910-15, reveals the development and scope of a Victorian polymath's literary, aesthetic and political passions.

Writing on the Image is a collection of essays that showcases the varied canon of Morris.

This well illustrated book celebrates every aspect of the wide-ranging achievements of William Morris - writer, designer, cultural critic, revolutionary socialist - with particular emphasis on their relevance to our own times. The book makes available up-to-date Morris scholarship in accessible form. Written by a group of international scholars who took part in a conference marking the centenary of the death of Morris in 1896, the book has sections devoted to Morris and Literature (covering texts from The Earthly Paradise to the late romances); Morris, the Arts & Crafts and the New World (including discussions of his influence in Rhode Island, Boston, Ontario and New Zealand); and Morris, Gender and Politics (with fresh consideration of his relation to Victorian ideas of manliness and of the particular qualities of his anti-statist politics). The latter section also draws attention to a hitherto unknown play by Morris's daughter May and concludes with an account of his biographer, the late E.P. Thompson.

This book provides a full-length critical study of William Morris's late works and demonstrates their essential role in promoting the continuing importance of Morris's ideas. It provides a new way of understanding their relevance to his writings on art and architecture, nature and the environment, and politics and Socialism.