William Morris A Life For Our Time

MacCarthy, Fiona

£30.00

Fiona MacCarthy has knitted together the many themes and threads in the life of William Morris into a coherent whole. Morris has come to be regarded as one of the giants of the 19th century.

Available on backorder

Publish Date: 05/08/2010

Description

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and described by A.S.Byatt as ‘one of the finest biographies ever published’, this is Fiona MacCarthy’s magisterial biography of William Morris, legendary designer and father of the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement.

‘Thrilling, absorbing and majestic.’ Independent
‘Wonderfully ambitious … The definitive Morris biography.’ Sunday Times
‘Delicious and intelligent, full of shining detail and mysteries respected.’ Daily Telegraph
Oh, the careful detail of this marvellous book! . . . A model of scholarly biography’. New Statesman

Since his death in 1896, William Morris has been celebrated as a giant of the Victorian era. But his genius was so multifaceted 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 ranked as a poet with Tennyson and Browning.

In her definitive biography – insightful, comprehensive, addictively readable – the award-winning Fiona MacCarthy gives us a richly detailed portrait of Morris’s complex character for the first time, shedding light on his immense creative powers as artist and designer of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, stained glass, tapestry, and books; his role as a poet, novelist and translator; on 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. It is a masterpiece of biographical art.

Additional information

Weight 1090 g
Dimensions 233 × 154 × 33 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

780

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

709.2 (edition:22)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K