William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary [Paperback]

E. P. Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1988

This biographical study is a window into 19th-century British society and the life of William Morris—the great craftsman, architect, designer, poet, and writer—who remains a monumental and influential figure to this day. This account chronicles how his concern with artistic and human values led him to cross what he called the “river of fire” and become a committed socialist—committed not only to the theory of socialism but also to the practice of it in the day-to-day struggle of working women and men in Victorian England. While both the British Labor Movement and the Marxists have venerated Morris, this legacy of his life proves that many of his ideas did not accord with the dominant reforming tendencies, providing a unique perspective on Morris scholarship.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Two impressive figures, William Morris as subject and E. P. Thompson as author, are conjoined in this immense biographical-historical-critical study.”  —Peter Stansky, New York Times

“An absorbing biographical study. . . . A glittering quarry of marvelous quotes from Morris and others, many taken from heretofore inaccessible or unpublished sources.”  —Walter Arnold, Saturday Review

"Thompson’s is the first biography to do justice to Morris’s political thought and so assemble the man whole. . . . It is not only the standard biography of Morris; it makes us realize, as no other writer has done, how completely admirable a man this Victorian was—how consistent and honest to himself and others, how incapable of cruelty or jargon and, above all, how free."  —Robert Hughes, Time magazine

"The massive text of this volume, which revolutionized Morris studies and outraged conservative (and purely literary) specialists, compels the reader to take on complicated matters bit by bit, almost day to day, sinking into Morris' life, letters, and milieu. Reading the book can be overwhelming but will be rewarding, not only for the subject but also for the author himself, as we read him through the study of his favorite romantic." —www.RainTaxi.com

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

E. P. Thompson was an English historian, socialist, and author of Making of the English Working Class. Peter Linebaugh is a social historian and a professor at the University of Toledo. He is the author of London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. He lives in Toledo, Ohio.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 829 pages
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr (November 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804715092
• ISBN-13: 978-0804715096
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,731,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Warehouse of Information on Morris, His Life, and His Work, January 31, 2008

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loce_the_wizard "loce_the_wizard" (Lilburn, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: William Morris: Romantic to revolutionary (Hardcover)

To chronicle the life of William Morris, his biographer, E.P. Thompson, purposely reminds the reader that the English Romantic period in literature strongly influenced Morris, from his childhood on. Tracing the steps of Morris' formal education, he documents how Morris was deeply affected by his studies of medieval art and literature and deeply influenced by the writings of both Carlyle and Ruskin, influences that had repercussions for the direction of Morris's artistic and political life.
Thompson worked from a treasure trove of material: letters, public documents, articles about William Morris, and, of course, the vast collection of literary works and political articles and speeches that Morris published.

He shows Morris as being at odds with Victorian sensibilities, both as an artist and political reformer, all tempered to some degree, by his illusory yearning for an ideal love, a yearning that doomed any hope of true happiness in his marriage to Jane Burden but made him an ardent reformer striving to bring about more equality for his fellow man.

Thompson chronicles specific incidents, such as Morris infamous arrest under false charges, with reams of details and viewpoints. This technique, while thorough, does not make for easy or quick reading. This biography is heavily weighted toward Morris's activities as a socialist reformer, and at times Thompson's commentary on Morris's literary output seems unduly colored by these socialist beliefs. This argument may be valid, as Thompson notes about Morris: "He looked upon the history of arts, not---as did many of his contemporaries---as the record of individual geniuses, each "inspired" and each influencing each other, but as part of wider social processes."

Likewise, he quotes Morris as saying "I never set up for a critic," by which me means that art is a "solace," an expression of "pleasure," thus, in some measure, confirming that Morris trivialized both the creative process and the role of art in society.

There is, in my view, not enough balanced information on the myriad contributions Morris made to literature---especially The Wood beyond the World, The Well at the World's End, and The Water of the Wondrous Isles---and other novels he wrote during the final decade of his life. Those works are worth more scrutiny, if for no other reason, because they clearly and firmly are the seminal works in what is now the genre of fantasy, in which Tolkien, deservedly so, reigns supreme. Yet without Morris, who was the first to combine elements from classical epic and medieval romance with conventions of the novel, this genre may not have taken form until much later.

I would also have expected more about the magnificent work from the Kelmscott Press, especially the much-revered Kelmscott Chaucer (if you are a book-lover, you owe it to yourself to see if a library near you has a facsimile) instead of a detailed footnote citing the various works of other experts.

More could have been done with the vast accomplishments Morris was responsible for in the visual arts, in his design of wallpapers, chintzes, and tapestries, as well as his furniture designs (the Morris chair indeed comes from this William Morris).

One other shortcoming, in my view, is that one gleans little about what Morris experienced as a child or adolescent. Also, surprisingly, there is much less detail about his marriage, his wife's affair, and his children than one would expect from a book of this scope.

Still, this biography is an excellent reference for the, I suspect, ever-dwindling number of scholars reviewing William Morris and his life. Bibliophiles who love biographies will not, I also suspect, readily enjoy Thompson's writing style, in which passages sometimes seem welded together with multiple colons, and who writes much more like a reporter than in the biographical style elevated by writers such as Walter Jackson Bate or David McCullough. Thompson had a daunting task before him in attempting to distill, to a single volume, the life of William Morris, of whom, upon hearing of Morris' death, remarked, "I consider the case is this: the disease is simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men."

Thompson no doubt did much of his research in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as the first copyright date for this book is 1955, and his writing style may seem at times harsh if compared with current biographical writing. Still, this volume is a virtual warehouse crammed with facts, accounts, details, and remembrances.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Biography of Morris-the-Socialist, March 6, 2010

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S. Pactor "reader" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (Paperback)

William Morris is the British artisan generally credited with inspiring the larger "Craftsman" movement, familiar to many Californians as a style of house architecture popular in the early part of the 20th century ("Craftsman style house"). EP Thompson is a British writer whose "History of the English Working Class" is as seminal a piece of writing as you are ever likely to read. William Morris: From Romantic to Revolutionary is Thompson's biography of Morris-the-socialist.

Like many famous socialist's of the 19th century, Morris came from a privileged background. He never had to work for a living. As a young university student, he fell in with a group of English artists who espoused Romantic believes. During that period, he wrote several pieces of epic poetry that found a huge audience in the UK (though no one reads it today.)


During this same period, he started "The Firm" a full service interior design firm where he actually made all the stuff he sold to rich people. He was also active in the first rumblings of what today we would call the "Historic Preservation" movement. From here, he moved decisively into socialism. This happened during the 1880s, and at the time he was likely the first semi-respectable intellectual in all of England to go all in on socialism. At the time, socialism was a pretty fluid concept, and the border lines between socialism/communism/anarchism were hard to determine.

I found the description of the early period of English socialism to be hilarious, particularly when Thompson describes the realization by the intellectual socialists that at some point, they would actually have to interact with the working classes who they claimed to be speaking for. We all no how that turned out: The Working Classes had no problem working within parliamentary democracy and they were less interested in revolution then an 8 hour day.

Morris was an opponent of "Parliamentary Socialism" preferring instead to wait for some magical transformation from capitalist to socialist paradise. There is some irony in the fact that although he spend most of his passion espousing socialism, he is today remembered more for his aesthetic theory.

In the end, Morris missed the trend which would simultaneously prove to be the death of any broad socialist revolution AND would be key to the rise to prominence of his craftsman aesthetic. And that trend? Why consumer capitalism of course. He missed the boat on that, but you can hardly blame him since he lived in a time where consumer capitalism was in a nascent state. But when capitalist figured out to generate desire in their audience, and then to satisfy that audience with consumer goods. Well, that was all she wrote for socialist revolution in the west. The working class didn't want a revolution, they wanted a television.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A highwayscribery "Book Report", January 28, 2009

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Stephen Siciliano "the highway scribe" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: William Morris: Romantic to revolutionary (Paperback)

"History has remembered the kings and warriors because they destroyed; Art has remembered the people because they created."
William Morris

William Morris sits atop the house of history like a weathervane turning against the prevailing winds rather than with them.

One of the earliest British socialists, he abhorred modernity. An entrepreneurial spirit of manifold passions, he preferred the middle ages to the Renaissance.

To the manor born (1834), cultivated as an effete poet with other rich and eccentric boys (Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti) of the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" at Oxford, Morris spent his middle- and old age calling for revolution from street corners in working class districts of London.

This essay is derived from a book written long ago, 1955 to be exact, by E.P. Thompson entitled, "William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary," purchased for a mere $2.95 at Labyrinth Books.

A citizen of Victorian England's roaring industrial empire, Morris could not abide by the times and spent his youth fancying life in the olden days; crafting poems in the style of Lord Alfred Tennyson replete with knights errant and creamy damsels making loving in limpid streambeds.

The society he loathed lauded him, blessed him with the poet's special fame, and validated the writings through which he sought to escape contemporary surroundings.

His Medievalism, Thompson wrote, was typical of the late-Romantic period in mid-nineteenth century England, an impulsive revolt against the Railway Age that hailed an older society of finer values than profit and capital utility.

Departed from academia Morris built "Red House," with an eye to infusing architecture with something of the Romantic revolt; adapting "late Gothic methods of building to the needs of the nineteenth century," said Thompson.

A visitor to Red House in 1863 describe it thusly:

"The deep red colour, the great sloping, tiled roofs; the small-paned widows; the low, wide porch and massive door; the surrounding garden divided into many squares, hedged by sweetbriar or wild rose, each enclosure with its own particular show of flowers; on this side a green alley with a bowling green, on that orchard walks amid gnarled old fruit-trees; all struck me as vividly picturesque and uniquely original."

Formation of his the firm Morris & Co. as he and his partners set out to establish a company of artisans with an eye to reviving the minor arts in England in, "an age of shoddy," according to Thompson.

Medievalism again provided the recipe.

"I have tried," Morris wrote, "to produce goods which should be genuine so far as their mere substances are concerned, and should have on that account the primary beauty in them which belongs to naturally treated substances: have tried for instance to make woollen substances as woollen as possible, cotton as cotton as possible, and so on; have used only the dyes which are natural and simple, because they produce beauty almost without the intervention of art; all this quite apart from the design of stuffs and whatnot."

Glass-firing, woodcutting, bookbinding, pottery, tile-glazing, weaving, embroidery and tapestry all came in for study under his industrious gaze.

He labored, with mixed success, to erase the line separating designer from studio craftsman so that the firm's employees might tap their own creative abilities and thereby alleviate the more grinding aspects of the work.

The venture was met with professional hostility as the product of intruders lacking commercial credentials, but soon enough forced its goal of challenging the reigning principles in decorative art.

Again, the wealthy social creatures Morris loathed bucked up his bank account and acclaimed his creations.

Never grateful, Morris found himself pushed; first toward the ineffectual liberalism of William Gladstone; and finally toward Marx as the Victorian era lurched deeper into violent foreign adventurism and greater abuse of working people.

"We are," he wrote, "living in an epoch when there is combat between commercialism, or the system of reckless waste, and communism, or the system of neighborly common sense."

Bet you never heard it put that way before.

Morris' communism was not the mid-century brand the mature among us became familiar with; the collective mass crushing the beleaguered individual.

A walking paradox, his collectivist vision could not be distinguished from his approach to the arts and was focused upon the individual; guaranteed the single person rights and comforts and, most importantly, the fullest realization of one's talents.

"Education," readers of his socialist tribune, Justice, were told, "must of necessity cease to be a preparation for a life of commercial success on the one hand, or of irresponsible labour on the other. It will become rather a habit of making the best of the individual's powers in all directions to which he is led by his innate disposition; so that no man will ever 'finish' his education while he is alive."

The revolution he foresaw would restore a pre-industrial community still in existence, but ravaged by the commercial Mammon to which every able body was obligated to consummate itself.

His Socialist miracle did not propose the erection of a new structure upon the old, rather reinforced that which had been weakened by economic materialism:

"That true society of loved and lover, parent and child, friend and friend, the society of well-wishers, of reasonable people conscious of the aspirations of humanity and of the duties we owe it through one another..."

His biographer observed that Morris' utopia called for the reestablishment of the personal and voluntary bonds of society and a doing away with the "impersonal and compulsive" relations rooted in a rule by the owners of property.

His thoughts, mostly old and long-forgotten, bear a contemporary ring in many passages.

"Civilization," Morris said, "is simply an organized injustice, a mere instrument for oppression, so much the worse than that which has gone before it, as its pretensions are higher, its slavery subtler, its mastery hard to overthrow because it is supported by such a dense mass of commonplace well-being and comfort."

His alternative served those to the right and left, secular and devout alike. It entailed a "remedy to be found in the simplification of life and the curbing of luxury and the desires for tyranny and mastery it gives birth to."

So much of his effort would be lost in the silly, internecine debates that have come to characterize left-wing politics. He endured and played a leading role in the split of the original Socialist League, fought the idea of running labor candidates for politics until that became the chosen road and bent to it again.

He fought the anarchists of Prince Kropotkin on one side, acolytes of the still-living Freidrich Hegel, on another, and the Fabian Socialists of George Bernard Shaw to his right.

He was caught in a terrible "Bloody Sunday" police riot in London, which caused a severe curtailing of his belief in the ability of civil movements (read: unarmed) to bring about revolutionary change, and spent himself silly on the "Justice" publication until he was rudely moved off its board of editors by men of different mien.

He died in his sixties, spent with efforts in so many of life's theaters, his legacy in poetry secure, his influence upon design engrained in the minds of those who launched the Bauhaus, the force of his belief in the working man evident in the gains made over the ensuing century.

Said the poet William Butler Yeats of Morris, "No man I have known was so well loved; you saw him producing everywhere organization and beauty, seeming almost in the same instant, helpless and triumphant."

And that is living.