Blackwell Reference Online

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William Morris was a writer, designer, and political activist. One of the early exponents of the aesthetic approach, later known as the Arts and Crafts movement, his intellectual breadth was seemingly boundless. His father, William Morris (1797–1847), was a speculative investor, and his success provided the young William with a luxurious childhood and a financially secure life dominated by the romantic medievalism of the age. He devoured the works of Sir Walter Scott and even had his own suit of armor. His fascination with medieval literature and history fed his imagination, and probably contributed to his embrace of the Oxford Movement, which dominated the teaching at Marlborough College, his school between 1848 and 1851. The Oxford Movement was a high-church movement that criticized the secularism of nineteenth-century Anglicanism. It emphasized the continuities between Roman Catholicism and the Church of England, both theologically and liturgically, and attempted to steer the church towards its origins. He entered Exeter College, Oxford in 1853, hoping to join the clergy and continue the reform of the Church of England begun by the founders of the Oxford Movement. At Oxford, Morris found a friend in Ned Jones (later Edward Burne-Jones), who was also drawn to Anglo-Catholicism and shared his desire for the transformation of Victorian society. It was through the writing of John ... log in or subscribe to read full text