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.

Marking the 125th anniversary of William Morris’s death, this is the most wide-ranging illustrated book about Morris ever published. William Morris’s interests were wide-ranging: he was a poet, writer, political and social activist, conservationist, and businessman, as well as a brilliant and original designer and manufacturer. This book explores the balance between Morris’s various spheres of activity, places his art in the context of its time, and examines his ongoing and far-reaching legacy. A pioneer of the Arts & Crafts Movement, William Morris (1834–1896) is one of the most influential designers of all time. Morris turned the tide of Victorian England against an increasingly industrialized manufacturing process toward a rediscovered respect for the skill of the maker. Morris’s whole approach still resonates today, and his designs are popular and much admired. Published to mark the 125th anniversary of Morris’s death, this book includes contributions from a wide range of Morris experts, with chapters on painting, church decoration and stained glass, interior decoration, furniture, tiles and tableware, wallpaper, textiles, calligraphy, and publishing. Additional materials include a contextualized chronology of Morris’s life and a list of public collections around the world where examples of Morris’s work may be seen today. This study is a wide- ranging, fully illustrated exploration of a great thinker and artist, and essential reading for anyone interested in the history of design.

Biographies and autobiographies.