William Morris [Paperback]

Fiona MacCarthy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2003

A biography of William Morris - designer, writer and poet, and one of the founders of the socialist movement - which knits together the innumerable threads and themes of his life, some of them contradictory.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An accomplished and original designer of textiles and furniture, books and typefaces, a socialist activist, poet and novelist (News from Nowhere), Morris (1834- 1896) had a "magpie mind" that sought expression in any number of media. MacCarthy (Eric Gill, a prize-winning biography of the sculptor), illuminates the paradoxes that shaped Morris's "painfully heroic progress through life." Morris was a manufacturer of lush housewares who rejected his father as a "capitalist villain"; an astringent critic of Victorian England who nearly became its poet laureate; a man both worldly and naive, stymied by his wife's affair with the charismatic Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Morris emerges in vivid snapshots as vital, protean and compassionate. This is the biography of a temperament?of a burgeoning reaction against late Victorian bourgeois complacency?that Morris shared with his friend painter Edward Burne-Jones, Rossetti, George Bernard Shaw and others. It also is shaped by interesting extended discussions?of the period's architecture, politics and literature?that sometimes distract from the account of the life they purportedly illuminate. Erudite, lavishly illustrated, including 24 pages of color, and absorbing, this is of interest for the amateur as well as the professional student of Victorian England.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"When William Morris was dying one of his physicians diagnosed his disease as 'simply being William Morris and having done more than most ten men."' This was in part true of the driven man who was a poet, translator, publisher, businessman and retailer, medievalist, weaver, textile designer, political activist, early environmentalist, father of British Socialism, and guiding force behind the Arts and Crafts movement. With his complex versatility, Morris was an enigma to his Victorian contemporaries. Though there have been numerous works on different aspects of Morris's work, MacCarthy (Eric Gill, LJ 3/1/89) tackles the massive job of the complete story. Her five years of research show in her full and vivid understanding of the artist, the man, his friends, relatives, and era. Well illustrated, this work will serve as a worthy companion to Elizabeth Wilhide's book of Morris interiors, William Morris: Decor and Design (LJ 2/1/92), and the Gillian Naylor-edited William Morris, By Himself: Designs and Writings (New York Graphic Society, 1988). Highly recommended.?Joseph Hewgley, Nashville P.L.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Faber Paperbacks (November 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571174957
• ISBN-13: 978-0571174959
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,065,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Final Biography on Morris, December 18, 1999

By 

Jan Eskildsen (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: William Morris: A Life for Our Time (Hardcover)

Most books about William Morris are like rainbows, filled with colorful images. Simply because he made so many wonderful and colorful embroideries, tapestries and patterns, and because color itself is something people like, and therefore buy.

This book doesn't have many colors inside, but it contains many black and white photographs, that are of great interest for those who like to read about William Morris and his time. And the combination of text and photographs create so many images in your mind, that you forget about color.

For the same people, this is the the final book about William Morris and his life. It's not the book to buy, if you want to know all about his printing of books in Kelmscott Press (there you have to go for Peterson's books), but it's the book about all the other stuff you want to know about Morris - and everything, you didn't know, you would want to know.

Having spent more than 5 years on this matter, Fiona MacCarthy has succeeded in making an extraordinary and therefore the final biography on William Morris.

More than 700 pages with more than 100 pages of source and reference notes.

It's a book to read and to read again and to use, when you're working with text about the period, the arts & crafts movement - or simply with Morris. Buy it, even if you don't have the money - wear the old jacket another year. You won't regret.

As long as it's out of print, you have to go to the library, where you should tell them to order some more books, so they print more.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Well Written Biography, July 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: William Morris: A Life for Our Time (Hardcover)

Fiona MacCarthy's background is in design, which brings a lovely perspective to her biography of Morris. MacCarthy also writes well, which is a plus in a book this size. She writes with affection for her subject, but without any of the bizarre idolatry with which some people approach Morris. He was a crashing bore as a poet, a mere amateur painter, a gifted fabric designer (but there are many gifted fabric designers), and a Socialist who knew only marginally more about what people actually do for a living than did Ruskin. Nevertheless, Morris was a volcano of artistic activity and heart-felt social ideas, and therein lay his genius. MacCarthy does an excellent job bringing Morris's genius to life in this first rate biography.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Satisfaction, October 27, 2011

By 

Mr. William J. Sterling - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: William Morris (Paperback)

Prompt service; quick delivery. So, once more, a very satisfied customer of Amazon.
In fact I have already finished reading this superbly documented and generously
illustrated biography by the talented Fiona MacCarthy. I am quite a fan of her biographies.

I am a committed Pre-Raphaelite junkie, preferring to lose myself in this wonderful
Victorian art world. I have by now quite a library of books on the Pre-Raphaelites largely
purchased from Amazon both in the U K and the U S A, all arriving without fail in far off
Australia within the delivery time promised.