The Routledge Companion To William Morris

William Morris (1834–96) was an English poet, decorative artist, translator, romance writer, book designer, preservationist, socialist theorist, and political activist, whose admirers have been drawn to the sheer intensity of his artistic endeavors and efforts to live up to radical ideals of social justice. This Companion draws together historical and critical responses to the impressive range of Morris’s multi-faceted life and activities: his homes, travels, family, business practices, decorative artwork, poetry, fantasy romances, translations, political activism, eco-socialism, and book collecting and design. Each chapter provides valuable historical and literary background information, reviews relevant opinions on its subject from the late-nineteenth century to the present, and offers new approaches to important aspects of its topic. Morris’s eclectic methodology and the perennial relevance of his insights and practice make this an essential handbook for those interested in art history, poetry, translation, literature, book design, environmentalism, political activism, and Victorian and utopian studies.

William Morris (1834–96) was an English poet, decorative artist, translator, romance writer, book designer, preservationist, socialist theorist, and political activist, whose admirers have been drawn to the sheer intensity of his artistic endeavors and efforts to live up to radical ideals of social justice. This Companion draws together historical and critical responses to the impressive range of Morris’s multi-faceted life and activities: his homes, travels, family, business practices, decorative artwork, poetry, fantasy romances, translations, political activism, eco-socialism, and book collecting and design. Each chapter provides valuable historical and literary background information, reviews relevant opinions on its subject from the late-nineteenth century to the present, and offers new approaches to important aspects of its topic. Morris’s eclectic methodology and the perennial relevance of his insights and practice make this an essential handbook for those interested in art history, poetry, translation, literature, book design, environmentalism, political activism, and Victorian and utopian studies.

A vibrant gathering of influential voices who have participated in the critical, political, and curatorial revival of William Morris's work.

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class offers a comprehensive and fresh assessment of the cultural impact of class in literature, analyzing various innovative, interdisciplinary approaches of textual analysis and intersections of literature, including class subjectivities, mental health, gender and queer studies, critical race theory, quantitative and scientific methods, and transnational perspectives in literary analysis. Utilizing these new methods and interdisciplinary maps from field-defining essayists, students will become aware of ways to bring these elusive texts into their own writing as one of the parallel perspectives through which to view literature. This volume will provide students with an insight into the history of the intersections of class, theory of class and invisibility in literature, and new trends in exploring class in literature. These multidimensional approaches to literature will be a crucial resource for undergraduate and graduate students becoming familiar with class analysis, and will offer seasoned scholars the most significant critical approaches in class studies.

This newly selected edition of William Morris's works brings together poetry and prose, lectures, articles, and letters from his life, ordered chronologically, with an introduction highlighting his pressing and prescient writing on matters of the natural and built environment, human and non-human relations, internationalism, migration, and social justice, as well as the wide range of his literary and artistic concerns. Expert textual notes draw attention to the interconnectedness of Morris's writing and its rich literary, historical, and political contexts and sources: this is work that reaches back to tales of personal, dynastic, and political passion in medieval Europe or the craftsmanship of ancient Persia as deftly as it lambasts Victorian work practices and living conditions in Britain or sets out to correct misconceptions about the nature of social revolution; it creates visions of a just, equal, and beautiful future from re-told or imagined pasts. This selection includes lyric, epic, and narrative poetry and a range of prose writings that tell stories, conjure worlds, rouse their readers to action, and urge them to care for the earth, its inhabitants, its beauty, and its histories. It demonstrates the continuing power of Morris's writings to speak to the present with as lively, particular, and provocative a voice as it spoke to its own time.

This 24-volume set, published 1910-15, reveals the development and scope of a Victorian polymath's literary, aesthetic and political passions.