Editing William Morris (section)

== Work ==

=== Literature ===

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| footer = Left: ''The Nature of Gothic'' by [[John Ruskin]], printed by Kelmscott Press. First page of text, with typical ornamented border. Right: [[Troilus and Criseyde]], from the Kelmscott ''Chaucer''. Illustration by Burne-Jones and decorations and typefaces by Morris.
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Besides being an artist William Morris was a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and translations of ancient and medieval texts. His first poems were published when he was 24 years old, and he was polishing his final novel, ''[[The Sundering Flood]]'', at the time of his death. His daughter May's edition of Morris's ''Collected Works'' (1910–1915) runs to 24 volumes, and two more were published in 1936.{{sfn|Faulkner|1983|pp=44–45}}

Morris began publishing poetry and short stories in 1856 through ''[[The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine]]'' which he founded with his friends and financed while at university. His first volume, ''The Defence of [[Guenevere]] and Other Poems'' (1858), was the first book of Pre-Raphaelite poetry to be published.{{sfn|Faulkner|1983|pp=44–45}} The dark poems, set in a sombre world of violence, were coolly received by the critics, and he was discouraged from publishing more for a number of years. "[[The Haystack in the Floods]]", one of the poems in that collection, is probably now one of his better-known poems. It is a grimly realistic piece set during the [[Hundred Years War]] in which the doomed lovers Jehane and Robert have a last parting in a convincingly portrayed rain-swept countryside.{{sfn|Faulkner|1983|pp=44–45}} One early minor poem was "[[Masters in this Hall]]" (1860), a Christmas carol written to an old French tune.<ref name="architect" /> Another Christmas-themed poem is "The Snow in the Street", adapted from "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" in ''[[The Earthly Paradise]]''.<ref name="composers" />

Morris met [[Eiríkur Magnússon]] in 1868, and began to learn the [[Icelandic language]] from him. Morris published translations of ''[[Gunnlaugs saga|The Saga of Gunnlaug Worm-Tongue]]'' and ''[[Grettis Saga]]'' in 1869, and the ''[[The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs|Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs]]'' in 1870. An additional volume was published under the title of ''Three Northern Love Stories'' in 1873.{{sfn|Faulkner|1983|pp=44–45}}<ref name="DNB" />
{{further|English translations of Homer#Morris}}

In the last nine years of his life, Morris wrote a series of imaginative fictions usually referred to as the "prose romances".{{sfn|Faulkner|1983|p=47}} These novels&nbsp;– including ''[[The Wood Beyond the World]]'' and ''[[The Well at the World's End]]''&nbsp;– have been credited as important milestones in the history of [[fantasy]] fiction, because, while other writers wrote of foreign lands, or of dream worlds, or the future (as Morris did in ''News from Nowhere''), Morris's works were the first to be set in an entirely invented [[fantasy world]].<ref name="doubleday" /> These were attempts to revive the genre of [[medieval romance]], and written in imitation of medieval prose. Morris's prose style in these novels has been praised by [[Edward James (historian)|Edward James]], who described them as "among the most lyrical and enchanting fantasies in the English language."<ref name="william3" />

On the other hand, [[L. Sprague de Camp]] considered Morris's fantasies to be not wholly successful, partly because Morris eschewed many literary techniques from later eras.{{sfn|Sprague de Camp|1976|p=46}} In particular, De Camp argued the plots of the novels are heavily driven by coincidence; while many things just happened in the romances, the novels are still weakened by the dependence on it.{{sfn|Sprague de Camp|1976|p=40}} Nevertheless, large subgenres of the field of fantasy have sprung from the romance genre, but indirectly, through their writers' imitation of William Morris.{{sfn|Sprague de Camp|1976|p=26}}

Early fantasy writers like [[Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany|Lord Dunsany]], [[E. R. Eddison]]<ref name="encyclopedia" /> and [[James Branch Cabell]]<ref name="supernatural" /> were familiar with Morris's romances. ''[[The Wood Beyond the World]]'' is considered to have heavily influenced [[C. S. Lewis]]'s [[Chronicles of Narnia|Narnia]] series, while [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] was [[Tolkien's modern sources|inspired by Morris's reconstructions]] of early Germanic life in ''[[The House of the Wolfings]]'' and ''The Roots of the Mountains''. The young Tolkien attempted a retelling of the story of Kullervo from the ''[[Kalevala]]'' in the style of ''The House of the Wolfings'';<ref name="companion" /> Tolkien considered much of his literary work to have been inspired by an early reading of Morris, even suggesting that he was unable to better Morris's work; the names of characters such as "[[Gandalf|Gandolf]]" and the horse Silverfax appear in ''[[The Well at the World's End]]''.

Sir [[Henry Newbolt]]'s medieval [[allegorical]] novel [[Aladore]] was influenced by Morris's fantasies.<ref>{{cite book |last=Reginald |first=Robert |chapter=Sir Henry Newbolt's ''Aladore'' |title=Xenograffiti: Essays on Fantastic Literature |publisher=Wildside Press |year=1996 |isbn=0-8095-1900-3 |pages=95–99}}</ref> [[James Joyce]] also drew inspiration from his work.<ref name="stephen" />

=== Textile design ===
{{See also|William Morris textile designs|William Morris wallpaper designs}}
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| footer = Left: Cabbage and vine tapestry, 1879. Right: Design for "Tulip and Willow" [[indigo dye|indigo]]-discharge wood-block printed fabric, 1873.
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[[File:A Wooden Pattern for Textile Printing from William Morris's Company.jpg|upright=0.8|thumb|A wooden pattern for textile printing from William Morris's company]]

During his lifetime, Morris produced items in a range of crafts, mainly those to do with furnishing,{{sfn|MacCarthy|1994|p=590}} including over 600 designs for wall-paper, textiles, and embroideries, over 150 for stained glass windows, three typefaces, and around 650 borders and ornamentations for the Kelmscott Press.{{sfn|Rodgers|1996|p=16}} He emphasised the idea that the design and production of an item should not be divorced from one another, and that where possible those creating items should be designer-craftsmen, thereby both designing and manufacturing their goods.{{sfnm|1a1=Parry|1y=1983|1p=6|2a1=MacCarthy|2y=1994|2p=590}} In the field of textile design, Morris revived a number of dead techniques,{{sfn|Parry|1983|p=6}} and insisted on the use of good quality raw materials, almost all natural dyes, and hand processing.{{sfn|Parry|1983|p=9}} He also observed the natural world first hand to gain a basis for his designs,{{sfn|Parry|1983|p=8}} and insisted on learning the techniques of production prior to producing a design.{{sfn|Parry|1983|p=8}}

Mackail asserted that Morris became "a manufacturer not because he wished to make money, but because he wished to make the things he manufactured."{{sfn|Mackail|1899|p=60}} Morris & Co.'s designs were fashionable among Britain's upper and middle-classes, with biographer [[Fiona MacCarthy]] asserting that they had become "the safe choice of the intellectual classes, an exercise in [[political correctitude]]."{{sfn|MacCarthy|1994|p=413}} The company's unique selling point was the range of different items that it produced, as well as the ethos of artistic control over production that it emphasised.{{sfn|MacCarthy|1994|pp=409–410}}

It is likely that much of Morris's preference for medieval textiles was formed&nbsp;– or crystallised&nbsp;– during his brief apprenticeship with G. E. Street. Street had co-written a book on ''Ecclesiastical Embroidery'' in 1848, and was a staunch advocate of abandoning faddish [[Berlin wool work|woolen work on canvas]] in favour of more expressive embroidery techniques based on [[Opus Anglicanum]], a [[surface embroidery]] technique popular in [[medieval England]].{{sfn|Parry|1983|pp=10–11}}

He was also fond of hand-knotted [[Persian carpet]]{{sfn|Parry|1983|p=89}} and advised the [[Victoria and Albert Museum|South Kensington Museum]] in the acquisition of fine [[Kerman carpet]]s.<ref name="Oriental carpets and their structure: highlights from the V&A collection" />

Morris taught himself embroidery, working with wool on a [[embroidery hoop|frame]] custom-built from an old example. Once he had mastered the technique he trained his wife Jane, her sister Bessie Burden and others to execute designs to his specifications. When "embroideries of all kinds" were offered through Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. catalogues, church embroidery became and remained an important line of business for its successor companies into the twentieth century.{{sfn|Parry|1983|pp=16–17}} By the 1870s, the firm was offering both embroidery patterns and finished works. Following in Street's footsteps, Morris became active in the growing movement to return originality and mastery of technique to embroidery, and was one of the first designers associated with the [[Royal School of Needlework|Royal School of Art Needlework]] with its aim to "restore Ornamental Needlework for secular purposes to the high place it once held among decorative arts."{{sfn|Parry|1983|pp=18–19}}

Morris took up the practical art of dyeing as a necessary adjunct of his manufacturing business. He spent much of his time at [[Staffordshire]] dye works mastering the processes of that art and making experiments in the revival of old or discovery of new methods. One result of these experiments was to reinstate [[indigo dye]]ing as a practical industry and generally to renew the use of those vegetable dyes, such as the red derived from [[Rubia|madder]], which had been driven almost out of use by the [[aniline dyes|anilines]]. Dyeing of wools, silks, and cottons was the necessary preliminary to what he had much at heart, the production of woven and printed fabrics of the highest excellence; and the period of incessant work at the dye-vat (1875–1876) was followed by a period during which he was absorbed in the production of textiles (1877–1878), and more especially in the revival of carpet-weaving as a fine art.<ref name="DNB" />{{sfn|Parry|1983|pp=36–46}}

Morris's patterns for woven textiles, some of which were also machine made under ordinary commercial conditions, included intricate [[double cloth|double-woven]] furnishing fabrics in which two sets of [[warp (weaving)|warps]] and [[weft]]s are interlinked to create complex gradations of colour and texture.{{sfn|Waggoner|Kirkham|2003|p=54}} Morris long dreamed of weaving tapestries in the medieval manner, which he called "the noblest of the weaving arts." In September 1879 he finished his first solo effort, a small piece called "Cabbage and Vine".{{sfn|Parry|1983|pp=103–104}}{{sfn|Waggoner|Kirkham|2003|p=86}}

=== Book illustration and design ===
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century avant-garde artistic movements took an interest in the [[typographic]]al arts, greatly enriching book design and illustration. Morris's designs, like the work of the Pre-Raphaelite painters with whom he was associated, referred frequently to medieval motifs. In 1891, he founded the Kelmscott Press, which by the time it closed in 1898 had produced more than fifty works using traditional printing methods, a hand-driven press and hand-made paper. They included his masterpiece, an edition of the ''Works of Geoffrey Chaucer'' with illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones. Morris invented three distinctive typefaces&nbsp;– Golden, Troy, and Chaucer, with the text being framed with intricate floral borders similar to illuminated medieval manuscripts. His work inspired many small private presses in the following century.{{sfn|Lyons|2011|pp=190–191}}

Morris's aesthetic and social values became a leading force in the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Kelmscott Press influenced much of the fine press movement in England and the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It brought the need for books that were aesthetic objects as well as words to the attention of the reading and publishing worlds.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Horowitz |first=Sarah|date=Fall 2006|title=The Kelmscott Press and William Morris: A Research Guide|journal=Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America|publisher=The University of Chicago Press|volume=25 |issue=2|pages= 60–65 |doi=10.1086/adx.25.2.27949442 |s2cid=163588697}}</ref>

At Kelmscott Press, the book-making was under his constant supervision and practical assistance. It was his ambition to produce a perfect work to restore all the beauty of illuminated lettering, richness of gilding and grace of binding that used to make a volume the treasure of a king. His efforts were constantly directed towards giving the world at least one book that exceeded anything that had ever appeared. Morris designed his type after the best examples of early printers, what he called his "[[golden type]]" which he copied after Jenson, Parautz, Coburger and others. With this in mind, Morris chose the paper which he adapted to his subject with the same care with which he selected his material for binding. As a result, only the wealthy could purchase his lavish works; Morris realized that creating works in the manner of the Middle Ages was difficult in a profit-grinding society.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=November 1896|title=William Morris, Artist, Poet, Craftsman|journal=Bradley, His Book|volume=2 |pages=7–11}}</ref>