ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the place of Kelmscott in William Morris’s life and its history during his lifetime. In the period between 1871 and 1896, Kelmscott Manor was variously jointly occupied by the designer, writer and socialist, Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the bookseller and publisher Frederick Startridge Ellis, and their circle of friends and family. Regular travel to Kelmscott would not only become impracticable due to distance, but also unnecessary as Ellis would now have his own “healthy” residence on the coast. Afterwards Morris retained the sole use of the manor until his death on 3 October 1896, having held it for some twenty-five years. Today, Kelmscott Manor is not only inherently associated with Morris, but it is also undoubtedly the most famous of his houses. Unlike any of his other residences, it features in the Collins English Dictionary as ‘a Tudor house near Lechlade in Oxfordshire: home of William Morris’.
