Morris and his Biographers

Nearly a hundred years after its publication, John William Mackail’s Life of William Morris remains essential reading for Morris scholars. Mackail was an Oxford classics don ¹ who married Margaret, the daughter of Morris’s closest friends, Sir Edward and Lady Georgiana Burne-Jones. He remained a valued friend and advisor to Morris’s younger daughter May until her death in 1938. As an intimate of the Morris circle, he had access to key people and sources, and his detailed knowledge of Morris’s private and public life enabled him to weave a detailed and attractive chronological narrative. His account of Morris’s early life, for example, draws upon the reminiscences of Morris’s sister, Henrietta, and brother, Stanley, and from Oxford friends like Richard Watson Dixon. ² Further information was provided by the friends and associates of Morris’s mature years, like his publisher and executor, Frederick Startridge Ellis. Particularly valuable was the detailed description of Morris and the firm compiled by his former manager, George Wardle, which is reproduced in Chapter 5.