William Morris: A Life for Our Time - Hardcover

MacCarthy, Fiona

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394585313 ISBN 13: 9780394585314

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1995

Synopsis

William Morris was an extraordinary figure, so manifold in his ambitions and talents, so outsize in his personality, that no single biographer has yet come to grips with his entire life, works, and character. As a wonderfully talented designer and artistic entrepreneur, Morris created a style that still lives; as a contradictory political figure - at once a radical and a traditionalist - he was a founding father of British Socialism in the era of Marx and Engels; as a poet and storyteller, he attained a huge contemporary reputation, producing several best-sellers; and as the husband of the Pre-Raphaelite icon Jane Morris (whose love affair with Dante Gabriel Rossetti caused a stir and led to many famous paintings), he was the subject of personal torments as profound as his creative ones.
In this biography, Fiona MacCarthy brings all the strands together, from the dreamy boy in a London suburb spinning medieval fantasies to the great bearded patriarch dividing his time between the design and production of beautiful fabrics, the translation of Icelandic epics, and the promotion of Socialism on street corners. Her understanding of his work as an artist-craftsman is profound, yet she is equally illuminating about the strange mixture of nostalgia and yearning for change that shaped his politics. At the same time, she is prepared to deal frankly and in detail with his often painful personal life.

About this title

Book Description:

William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy is the magisterial biography of one of the great figures of Victorian arts and crafts, from one of our greatest popular historians.

About the Author:

Fiona MacCarthy established herself as one of the leading writers of biography in Britain with her widely acclaimed book Eric Gill, published in 1989. Byron: Life and Legend was described by A. N. Wilson as 'a flawless triumph' and William Morris, described by A. S. Byatt as 'large, delicious and intelligent, full of shining detail', won the Wolfson History Prize and the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Award. Fiona MacCarthy received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography for The Last Pre-Raphaelite, and was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0394585313
• ISBN 13: 9780394585314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Editor: Elliott Charles