History Of Architecture

William Morris
 William Morris - Introduction
 William Morris was born in Walthamstow, London
in 1834. He was educated at Marlborough School
and Exeter College, Oxford. He spent a year
working for G. E. Street, where he initiated a
lifelong friendship with Philip Webb, Street's chief
assistant.
 Recognizing the poor quality of contemporary
furnishings and fittings, Morris, helped found the
firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co. The firm
produced furniture, fabrics, wallpapers, and
stained glass.
 A prime mover in the establishment of the Society
for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Morris
fought to save buildings from a prevalent, but
destructive policy of "restoration". He was the William Morris
founder and leader of the socialist league, as well
as the founder of the Kelmscott Press which
specialized in designing lettering and borders, and
publishing English literature, both classic and
contemporary.
 Morris considered art "the expression of man's joy
 William Morris
 William Morris was known to be energetic, versatile, and
industrious for he accomplished many projects
throughout his career.
He was a popular and prolific Victorian poet and
translator of Northern mythology.
As an artist-craftsman he invented and revived
lost techniques for printing, and for creating textiles,
embroidery and stained glass.
He opened his own textile factory,and became a
successful entrepreneur in the decorating and
manufacturing business.
He was thus eminent as poet, novelist, translator,
artist, and printer, also gained a place in the history of
socialism.

During the last two decades of his life he became an

ardent Socialist, giving hundreds of lectures on the topic
throughout Britain. Despite various ventures, Morris had
a lasting enthusiasm for medievalism and Arthuriana.
 Vision of William Morris
 William Morris’ work is important and addresses serious and
fundamental questions in a way that few have done : the
nature of work and its relation to art; how work is to be
organised and by whom; what is to be produced and how:
what it is to be human what our real needs are anyway.
 Morris’ importance lies not in having given unimpeachable
answers to these questions, but in that he managed to
formulate the questions in ways that were both illuminating
and suggestive. Central to Morris’ thought is the question of
what it is we are fighting for, and it is his vision of an
alternative future that informs his whole approach.Morris saw
the need for free creative activity, for work, as a fundamental
human need, every bit as basic as the needs for food, clothing
and housing. His vision provides a guiding light towards
recovering the communist perspective.
 Morris elaborated his vision of a communist organisation of
work, in the prose romances like News from Nowhere, and
also in the course of numerous lectures.
 News from Nowhere and A Dream of John Ball are some
examples of his communal approach. News from Nowhere, in
particular, is full of ambiguities.
 Morris - Circle
 Morris formed a consortium with like
minded people in 1861, namely , Christina
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Philip
webb, & John Edmund street. These then
worked together as a team to commission
the works. The projects mainly included
residences and their interiors. Because of
the customization of all products the cost
was impeccably high which was not
affordable to many.

 The people associated with him stayed with

him throughout and have commissioned
some of the best pieces of art. Christina Rossetti.

 Philip Webb shared the most long lasting

relationship with Morris and also helped him
to build the Red House- residence for
William Morris.
 Arts And Craft Movement
 The concept of industrial design was born from the Arts and
Crafts Movement. Christopher Dresser has been identified as
the father of industrial design, the principal that mass produced
goods could still be well-designed. And although many of the
true Arts and Crafts proponents would have nothing to do with
mass production from factories, their ideas greatly influenced
the design standards of the factories.
 After the Great Exhibition of 1851 there was a desire amongst
Victorian middle class people to acquire goods which looked
magnificent and affluent, without spending much money. These
were the "nouveau riche", not very highly educated, not
artistically sophisticated, but with enough money to spend that
they were a major influence on the manufacturers. And on the
other hand, manufacturers took advantage of the capacity of
machines to make goods which looked sumptuous but were
very cheaply made. The goods of this period have been
described as "absurdly decorated with gilt, veneers, and marble
used at every opportunity". Walter Crane called it "design
debauchery".
 It was into this environment that the Arts and Crafts Movement
entered and advocated good simple design made in basic,
 Arts & Craft Movement
 The name derives from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition
Society (1888). Inspired by John Ruskin and other writers
who deplored the effects of industrialization, William Morris
founded a firm of interior designers and manufacturers to
produce handcrafted textiles, printed books, wallpaper,
furniture, jewelry, and metalwork. The movement was
criticized as elitist and impractical in an industrial society,
but in the 1890s its appeal widened and spread to other
countries, including the U.S.
 William Morris was a writer and a designer of fabrics,
furniture, and books. He took the ideas of John Ruskin and
the Pre-Raphaelites and turned them into practical realities.
His workshops produced beautiful products made by artists
and craftsmen. He looked backwards for his inspiration,
admiring Gothic designs and the social structure of the
middle ages. But at the end of his life he was disillusioned,
and faced the stark reality that the goods his artists made
were too expensive for the masses. His designs enhanced
only the lives of the rich. They did not change society in the
way he had hoped.
 Arts & Craft Movement
 The Arts and Crafts Movement was a response to the
industrial revolution. It was a broad and diverse movement,
incorporating many idealistic themes. The common beliefs
were:
 Well-designed buildings, furniture, and household goods
would improve society
 The material environment affected the moral fibre of
society  The ideal was contented workers making
beautiful objects both design and working lives had
been better in the past.
 Suddenly in the early 19th century there were huge factories
manufacturing millions of items, and goods which had
formerly been made by artisans, craftsmen/women, and
artists were now being made without the help of any of these
people. The factories were criticised for their effects on the
day to day lives of working people and for their effects on the
home environment, filled with goods which were perceived to
be devoid of beauty, devoid of harmony, and just plain ugly.
 England in particular went through a low period in terms of
the design and quality of its manufactured goods, so much so
that the government set up a Select Committee on Art and
 Morris: The Separation of Art and
Work
 Morris’ critique of capitalism started from that of Ruskin, but went
further. Even before he became a communist, he was already making
fundamental criticisms of bourgeois society
 In ‘The Lesser Arts’, Morris argued that in the Middle Ages there had
been no division of art into the ‘higher’ arts and the ‘lesser’ arts.
Artists were simply craftsmen who turned their skills to different tasks
as the need arose – painting, sculpture, architecture, pottery, etc.
With the separation of the arts into the greater and the lesser, both
had suffered. Art had been separated from the people, and the crafts
had gone into a decline. The workshop system of the eighteenth
century had initiated this decline, and made worse by the factory
system of the nineteenth century, especially by the use of machines.
This had robbed the worker of all joy in labour. Art had been expelled
from the production process, and shoddy workmanship and design
 Thewas the result.
decorative arts, he argued, ‘are part of a system intended for the
expression of man’s delight in beauty’; they ‘are the sweeteners of human
labor, both to the handicraftsman whose life is spent in working in them,
and to people in general who are influenced by the sight of them at every
turn of the day’s work; they make our toil happy, our rest fruitful’. To
restore the decorative arts to their former glory required enormous change
in social organisation. The decorative arts were in a state of anarchy and
disorder, and ‘the only real help’ for them ‘must come from those who
work in them; nor must they be led, they must lead’.
 Morris: The Separation of Art and
Work
 For Morris, at stake was the nature of work as such; which was
the most important. An artist was merely ‘a workman who is
determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be
excellent’. It was necessary that ‘the handicraftsman, left
behind by the artist when the arts were sundered, must come
up with him, must work side by side with him’. There were
‘stupendous difficulties, social and economic’, hindering this
task, but they had to be overcome.
 He thought leisure was needed ‘from poverty and all its griping,
sordid cares’. Once that was achieved, ‘we should have leisure
to think about our work, that faithful daily companion, which no
one will venture to call the curse of labour’. Each one would then
be happy in work, ‘each in his place, no man grudging at
another; no one bidden to be any man’s servant, every one
scorning to be any man’s master: men will then assuredly be
happy in their work, and that happiness will assuredly bring
forth decorative, noble, popular art. In such condition of society,
‘every man will have his share of the best’.
 This was written in 1877, before Morris crossed the ‘river of fire’
and became a socialist. Yet we can see the core of a critique of
capitalism. Morris had taken Ruskin to the verge of socialism. He
 Art and Socialism
 The condition of art was closely ‘bound up with the general
condition of society, and especially with the lives of those who
live by manual labour and who we call the working class’, as he
put it in ‘Art Under Plutocracy’ in 1884. Everything a man
makes is either a pleasure to him or a source of pain, either
beautiful or ugly. In times when art was abundant and healthy,
all workers were artists, the instinct for beauty being so inborn
in every individual that the whole body of craftsmen made
beautiful things as a matter of course, and the whole population
was an audience for the ‘intellectual arts’ – poetry, painting,
etc.
 In modern times, the instinct for beauty had become checked,
and little beauty was expressed in the decorative arts. The loss
of this instinct for beauty had gone so far that it was ‘surely and
not slowly destroying the beauty of the very face of the earth’.
Indeed, ‘the well of art is poisoned at its spring’.
 The degradation of the arts was not the product of industrial
society as such, but of ‘the system of competition in the
production and exchange of the means of life’. Morris was of
the view that this change would ‘give an opportunity for the
new birth of art, which is now being crushed to death by the
William Morris’s Art Works
 Garden Sub-urbs
 The credit for Conservation of Garden sub-urbs goes to
Morris as he advocated that the city dwellers should
have access to clean environment, thus, being close to
nature.
 This concept also reflects William Morris’s love for
natural beauty and beauty in its purest form.
 The concept of Garden Sub-urbs was further expanded
and theorized by Ebnezar Howard.

Excellent Orator
Morris lectured all around europe on disadvantages of the
industrial revolution and advised people to go back to the
Pre-industrial times.
He prepared a series of 35 lectures on this topic.
 Morris and Machinery
 It is precisely this that explains Morris’ apparently
paradoxical view of machinery. He was suspicious of the
machine, as Pevsner notes, but his later insistence that we
must become masters of our machines is not ‘inconsistent’
with his support for the handicrafts. Morris’ attitude to the
machine was not simple; it certainly was not a simplistic
rejection of the machine.
 Initially, Morris had taken a very negative view of
machinery. Thus, for example, following John Stuart Mill, he
argued that ‘labour-saving machinery’ did not save the
worker any labour at all; it saved the capitalist the cost of
labour, and enabled him to extend the duration of labour so
as to expand profits. He argued that if machinery was used
to lighten men’s labour and to relieve them of the burden of
labour that was merely painful, ‘the utmost ingenuity would
scarcely have been wasted on it’. But he noted that in fact
the opposite occurred. Later, however, he began to take a
more positive view, arguing that machinery could and
should be used to do dangerous and dull work, leaving men
free to perform more pleasant tasks.
 Morris and Machinery
 Ideally, Morris would have automated all work that was
unpleasant or mere drudgery, leaving us free to carry out
tasks that were more congenial. He also suggested that we
might want to think whether we really needed to perform
such work as was not intrinsically fulfilling.

 The purpose of industrial revolution was to impose control

from above, to regulate the very movements of every worker
in a factory, to force the worker to work at the rate set by the
capitalist. This was built into its very design. Such machinery
could not provide the basis for the free, creative labour that
Morris saw as the need of every human being. It could not be
the basis for creative self-expression. While Morris believed
that machinery could be used to lighten men’s work in certain
areas, he argued – rightly – that no one should have to spend
all his or her time in minding a machine. Such a life could not
be bearable.
 Morris was not ultimately against machinery as such; he was
not committed to the revival of the handicrafts per se, but in
infusing machine production with standards of craftsmanship
and a spirit of self-expression that had been present in an
 Morris and Machinery
 Work could itself be a pleasure; indeed, ‘the pleasurable
exercise of our energies is at once the source of all art
and the cause of all happiness’. In producing goods for
use, therefore, the producer will be ‘making the goods for
himself; for his pleasure in making them and using them’.
 The point of socialism was not, for Morris, a more efficient
way of organising mass production, but was rather to
abolish the need for mass production. Morris opposed the
reduction of the worker to a mere appendage of a
machine, forms of production which denied the worker
any kind of freedom of self-expression. The machinery
necessary for mass production, of which the assembly
line is merely the highest form, could never have
permitted the free creativity necessary for communism.
<P<Final Goal and Immediate Demands
Looking back from the vantage point of the start of the
twenty-first century, it is possible to recognise the
enduring quality of Morris’ contribution. With the passing
of time, it has only gained in relevance. His vision of the
final goal is immensely practical. It informed his day-to-
day politics, as it could also ours.
 Interpretations of Morris
 To understand William Morris, we must first clear up some
misconceptions. Morris has been appropriated by all sorts of
movements and tendencies, both artistic and political. The
artists, primarily the modernists, tend to focus on his art at the
expense of his politics, and the politicians, anarchists and
Marxists alike, focus on his politics at the expense of his art. In
separating Morris’ art from his politics, however, they
impoverish our understanding of both.
 A typical and influential modernist approach is that offered by
Pevsner. In Pioneers of Modern Design, Pevsner attempts to
assess Morris’ influence on design in abstraction from many of
his other concerns. He focuses primarily on Morris’ attempts to
reform the product. Morris, he argues, was the first artist to
recognise how precarious the social foundations of art had
become as a result of the division between the ‘fine’ and the
‘lesser’ arts. Morris wanted to revive the handicrafts and to
make the most humble objects of everyday use once more
expressions of beauty: ‘We owe it to him that an ordinary
man’s dwelling-house has once more become a worthy object
of the architect’s thought, a chair, a wallpaper or a vase a
worthy object of the artist’s imagination.’ While not himself a
modernist, Morris helped initiate a process that culminated in
 Interpretations of Morris
 Whether the left claims Morris or rejects him, it usually
assesses his political conclusions against some preconceived
standard and in abstraction from the totality of his thought. By
far the best Marxist account of Morris, one that tries to
examine Morris’ work as a whole, is that offered by E.P.
Thompson.
 Thompson’s thesis is that in becoming a Marxist, Morris did
not break with romanticRomanticism, but rather revitalised
and transformed the tradition of Keats and Ruskin. Thompson
locates Morris in the context of the defeat of the
romanticRomantic revoltRevolt. He argues that in his youth
Morris was inspired primarily by people like Carlyle and
Ruskin; from Carlyle he derived the idea of labour as the basis
of life, and from Ruskin the idea that labour must be creative
labour if it is to be fit for human beings. Thompson argues,
moreover, that although Morris recognised the defeat of
romanticRomanticism, he never reconciled himself to it.
Indeed, ‘this youthful protest, still burning within him’, brought
him into contact in 1882 with the pioneers of socialism: ‘And
when he found that these pioneers not only shared his hatred
of modern civilisation, but had an historical theory to explain
its growth, and the will to change it to a new society, the old
 Interpretations of Morris
 Thompson compares Ruskin’s critique of the modern labour
process with Marx’s critique of alienated labour and argues
that when Morris came to the study of Capital 30 years
later, he was already prepared to accept its arguments
because of his basis in Ruskin.
 Thompson has provided a marvellous and exciting account
of Morris’ political evolution. His thesis, summed up in the
title, William Morris: From Romantic to Revolutionary, is
fundamentally correct. What is at issue is what kind of
revolutionary Morris became. While Thompson is right to
stress Morris’ closeness to Marx, and his independent road
to Marx’s conclusions, he does not really prove his point. To
a certain extent, the sheer detail that Thompson offers
obscures his own argument. About two-thirds of the book is
devoted to discussion of Morris’ day-to-day political activity
as a socialist, making it a wonderful source of information
about the early socialist movement in England and essential
reading. But Morris’ real contribution, his critique of the
separation of art and work under capitalism, and his vision
of their reunion under communism, gets lost amidst the
detail. In a lengthy work, somehow the various strands
 Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings (SPAB)
 The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
(SPAB) was founded by William Morris and Philip Webb in
1877, to oppose what they saw as the insensitive renovation
of ancient buildings then occurring in Victorian England.
 Morris was particularly concerned about the practice, which
he described as "forgery", of attempting to restore buildings
to an idealised state from the distant past. Instead, he
proposed that ancient buildings should be protected, not
restored, so that their entire history would be preserved as
cultural heritage.
 SPAB still operates according to Morris's original manifesto.
It publishes books, and runs courses and a telephone advice
line. Under the Planning Acts the Society must be notified of
all applications in England and Wales to demolish in whole or
part any listed building. It currently has 8,700 members
(2007).
 The Society also has a branch in Scotland, and the Mills
Section, which is the only British national body concerned
with the preservation, repair and continued use of traditional
windmills and watermills.
 The society which is a registered charity is based at 37
 Socialism
 In the 1870s, Morris had begun to take an active interest in
politics. He became treasurer of the National Liberal
League in 1879, but after the Irish coercive measures of
1881 he finally abandoned the Liberal party and drifted
further into socialism.
 Thenceforward for two years his advocacy of the cause of
socialism absorbed not only his spare time, but the thought
and energy of all his working hours. For it he even
neglected literature and art.
 At the franchise meeting in Hyde Park in 1884 it was
unable to get a hearing. Morris, however, had not yet lost
heart. Internal dissensions in 1884 led to the Morris's
foundation of the breakaway Socialist League, and in
February 1885 a new organ, "Commonweal", began to
print Morris's rallying-songs. Still, differences of opinion
and degree prevented concerted action; and when, after
the Trafalgar Square riots in February 1886, Morris
remonstrated with the anarchic section he was denounced
by the advanced party and ever afterwards was regarded
with suspicion. In 1889 he was deposed from the
management of "Commonweal" and gradually lost all
 KELMSCOTT PRESS
 By 1888 Morris was beginning to move beyond his
preoccupation with socialism and direct his attention
once more to activities he had promoted during the
1860s and 1870s. To Morris’s surprise many items were
on display by artists and craftsmen who were living out
his early teachings, actually representing the first circle
of Morris admirers and pupils among the next generation
of architects, printers, sculptors, decorators, metal
workers, etchers, etc. Morris admitted, “I believe they are
getting on pretty well.”
Morris & Co. participated in the Exhibit with
displays of furniture, stained glass, embroideries, fabrics,
textiles, tapestries, and calligraphy. But not one of
Morris’s own books was there. Perhaps this was a
reflection of the fact that his own writings were still
inadequately printed.
 Morris took inspiration from Walker who used the slides
to show comparisons between the horrors of Victorian
typography and the most beautiful books of the past,
especially those produced by printers of the fifteenth and
 The KELMSCOTT
PRESS
 Morris had solved the problem of finding
a source for hand-made paper of sufficient
quality, hired appropriately skilled
employees, rented space in
Hammersmith, installed his equipment,
including a Demy Albion press and a
Super Royal Genuine Albion Press, he still
had to locate a supplier of ink. He
searched for a pure product without
chemical additives, made from linseed oil, Golden Type Printing
lampblack, and turpentine. Most of the
inks he tried had been thinned for use on
rotary and cylinder presses, with the
result producing a gray, washed-out
appearance. With the Albion hand
presses, Morris wanted a thicker, slower-
drying, very black ink.
 Morris printed in golden type style then in
gothic which was the most common
typeface in northern Europe . Gothic is
characterized by narrow, tall, pointed Gothic Type Printing
designs, acute angles, an absence of
curves, and heavy black strokes.
 William Morris - influences
 Such was the man William Morris: painter, poet, translator,
designer, decorator, craftsman, manufacturer, businessman,
printer, artist, socialist, reformer, husband, father, friend. To
honor this life and commemorate the hundredth anniversary of
his death, the Special Collections Library at The University of
Michigan has mounted this exhibit. Included are first and early
editions, descriptions and photos of his art, and a fine array of
books from his Kelmscott Press. The story describes one of the
great Victorians, a man who was at once a dreamer and idealist
as well as a realist and pragmatist. At the time of his death, his
attending physician is said to have remarked that here lived a
man who accomplished “more work than most ten men.” Literary
critic George Sampson, when he was summing up Morris’s
amazing career, said, “His whole strength of purpose was
dedicated to the reconstitution of modern life, upon conditions
that would bring beauty to all men.” Morris’s enlightened vision
still beckons to our contemporaries, and perhaps is one
explanation for his enduring reputation.
 It was the work of John Ruskin that had the most profound
impact on Morris.
 The main influence was The Nature of the Gothic, originally a
chapter of The Stones of Venice (1853), in which Ruskin
 Art for the People
 William Morris, promised that utilitarian objects would
become works of art thus transforming bored and benighted
laborers into inspired craftsmen. Morris said that to practice
one’s craft was to become enlightened and ennobled. He
said “the artist-craft workers were destined to serve as a
cadre for the regeneration of nations.” As all members of a
given community became either producers or consumers of
unique individually produced objects of art, a profound social
healing would result.
 Moreover, the centrality of all the arts from pottery to
architecture would be restored. Morals and manners would
be improved. Under the pursuit of a craft aesthetic, social
unity might be strengthened. The movement even fostered a
common sense of ownership of the national landscape.
Morris foresaw the rise of a kind of land ethic. A new sense of
accountability would emerge to rescue green England from
under the bleak carcass of the industrial wasteland. Arts &
Crafts celebrated the braided strength of art, virtue, and
work. Even imperialism and mass production would be
abandoned with the advance of homo aestheticus.
 Morris Art
 His stained glass, medieval murals, wallpapers and fabric
designs turned out to be so labor intensive that only
wealthy cultured voluptuary could afford them. His
beautifully crafted household utensils were too expensive
to compete with cheap mass produced goods. Etched
against the immense squalor of industrial Britain and North
America, the buildings of Morris and his mentor, John
Ruskin, were little more than a scattering of sunbeams in
an architectural midnight. But while Morris died bankrupt
and bitterly disappointed, his legacy lived on in the Roycroft
of North America, in the craft communes of the 1960’s and
in the booming Modern Arts Crafts Movement on five
continents.
The style, if not the social ethic, of Arts &
Crafts is
alive and well in millions of homes and
businesses
around the
The intricacy world. designs can be seen in his
in Morris
printing also, the intrinsic borders has floral patterns.
 Morris - Writings
 Among Morris’s many aesthetic passions was an
appreciation for language and the written word. His
literary production, like his reading, was wide-ranging:
during his lifetime he wrote poems, translations, book
reviews, bellettristic essays, short stories, and prose
romances, including a number of works advocating English
socialism.
 “A Night in a Cathedral” , “The Earthly Paradise” , “Love is
Enough”. Are amongst some of the best publications by
William Morris, in which he writes about the life
experiences in different situations. Through these one can
make out the intellectual approach of Morris towards life.
This Morris work also showcase the extreme
Love and respect for art which were
embedded into him.
 Biography
 William Morris (March 24, 1834 – October 3, 1896) was one
of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts
Movement and is best known as a designer of wallpaper and
patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction, and an early
founder of the socialist movement in Britain.
 The tragic conflict in Morris’s life was his unfulfilled desire to
create affordable – or even free – beautiful things for
common people, whereas the real-life result was always the
creation of extremely expensive objects for the discerning
few. (In his utopian novel News from Nowhere, everybody
works for pleasure only, and beautifully handcrafted things
are given away for free to those who simply appreciate.)
 Morris was born in Walthamstow near London. His family
was wealthy, and he went to Oxford (Exeter College), where
he became influenced by John Ruskin and met his life-long
friends and collaborators, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward
Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, and Philip Webb. He also
met his wife, Jane Burden, a working-class woman whose
pale skin and coppery hair were considered by Morris and
his friends the epitome of beauty.
 Biography
 The artistic movement Morris and the others made famous
was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They eschewed the
tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and
architecture and favoured a return to hand-craftsmanship,
raising craftsmen to the status of artists.
 Morris left Oxford to join an architecture firm, but soon found
himself drawn more and more to the decorative arts. He and
Webb built Red House at Bexleyheath in Kent, Morris’s
wedding gift to Jane. It was here his design ideas began to
take physical shape. The brick clocktower in Bexleyheath
town centre had, in 1996, a bust of Morris added in an
original niche.
 Morris and Rossetti rented a country house, Kelmscott Manor
near Lechlade, Gloucestershire, as a summer retreat, but it
soon became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris to have a
long-lasting affair. To escape the discomfort, Morris often
travelled to Iceland, where he researched Icelandic legends
that later became the basis of poems and novels.
 After the death of Tennyson in 1892, Morris was offered the
Poet Laureateship, but declined.

 Biography
 In 1861, he founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
with Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Madox Brown, and Philip
Webb. Throughout his life, he continued to work in his own
firm, although the firm changed names. Its most famous
incarnation was as Morris and Company. His designs are still
sold today under licences given to Sanderson and Sons and
Liberty of London.
 In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings. His preservation work resulted indirectly in the
founding of the National Trust.
 Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain’s first
socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels to
begin the socialist movement. In 1883 he joined the Social
Democratic Federation, and in 1884 he organised the Socialist
League. One of his best known works, News from Nowhere, is a
utopian novel describing a socialist society. This side of
Morris’s work is well-discussed in the biography (subtitled
‘Romantic to Revolutionary’) by E. P. Thompson.
 Morris’s book, The Wood Between the Worlds, is considered to
have heavily influenced C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series, while J. R.
R. Tolkien was inspired by Morris’s reconstructions of early
 Conclusion
 Thus William Morris was eminent as poet, novelist,
translator, artist, and printer, a socialist, and an excellent
orator.
Morris was deeply in love with art in its purest form
and considered that art pieces should be exclusive which
should have some time and patience associated with
them, this was the reason that he opposed industrial
revolution as it parted man from art, hence the
sentiments and labor associated with the art piece, which
according to him was bad.
He even advocated his thoughts through a religious tilt
against industrial revolution as he said that, ”Salvation
can be attained only when people rely on hand crafted
goods.”
He also said “Production by machine is evil”. As he made
everything by hand, the cost became extravagant and
what he had aimed could not be successful. He wanted
that art should be available to all which became
 Bibliography
 www.wikipedia.com-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century
 www.morrissociety.com
 www.typophile.com – william morris & his
contributions to europe.
 www.google.com - effect of william
morris and john ruskin on european
society in the 19th century europe
 www.google.com – king.php.htm – American
Communication Journal
 www.google.com - william morris
view+industrial revolution
 Bibliography
 www.victorianweb.org/authors/morris/ora
.
 www.google.com-www.william
morris/GreatBuildingsOnline/htm
 www.answers.com - Society for the
Protection of Ancient Buildings