William Morris, Revolutionary

In his study of William Morris, Jack Lindsay shows us an artist whose work exemplifies the activist artist. In Morris’ early life Lindsay identifies the love of nature and precocious literacy that were the basis of his literary and visual art. He traces Morris’ development from escapist poet of the 1860s, to political activist of the late 1870s via his engagement with old Norse and Icelandic cultures, to socialist and environmentalist artist and activist in the 1880s and 1890s. In this final phase Lindsay describes Morris’ criticism in his utopian and fantasy novels of his society’s destruction of nature, imperial violence, and gross inequality, deploying the sensory appeal of art to engage the reader in a potentially transformative analysis of themselves and their society.