ABSTRACT
William Morris was an English poet, decorative artist, translator, romance writer, calligrapher, book designer, preservationist, journalist, political leader, and theorist of socialism and the decorative arts. For what is now approaching a century and a half, his admirers have been drawn to the beauty, interconnectedness, and farsightedness of his artistic endeavors and efforts to live up to radical ideals of social justice. In the immediate decades after his death, Morris’s artwork, writings, and memory remained directly influential in Britain, Europe, North America and elsewhere, and after a slight dip in favor at midcentury, these have all enjoyed a remarkable resurgence of attention since the 1970s. Morris referred to himself as an artist, and his wide influence on the decorative arts has been honored in a series of major exhibitions of his works and those of his fellow Pre-Raphaelites held in recent years in Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
