William Morris, one of the most eminent imaginative writers of theVictorian age, differs from most other poets and men of letters intwo ways—first, he did great work in many other things as well as inliterature; secondly, he had beliefs of his own about the meaning andconduct of life, about all that men think and do and make, verydifferent from those of ordinary people, and he carried out theseviews in his writings as well as in all the other work he didthroughout his life.
He was born in 1834. His father, a member of a business firm in theCity of London, was a wealthy man and lived in Essex, in a countryhouse with large gardens and fields belonging to it, on the edge ofEpping Forest. Until the age of thirteen Morris was at home among alarge family of brothers and sisters. He delighted in the countrylife and especially in the Forest, which is one of the most romanticparts of England, and which he made the scene of many real andimaginary adventures. From fourteen to eighteen he was at school atMarlborough among the Wiltshire downs, in a country full of beauty andhistory, and close to another of the ancient forests of England, thatof Savernake. He proceeded from school to Exeter College, Oxford,where he soon formed a close friendship with a remarkable set of youngmen of his own age; chief among these, and Morris's closest friend forthe rest of his life, was Edward Burne-Jones, the painter. Study ofthe works of John Ruskin confirmed them in the admiration which theyalready felt for the life and art of the Middle Ages. In the summervacation of 1855 the two friends went to Northern France to see thebeautiful towns and splendid churches with which that country had beenfilled between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries; and therethey made up their minds that they cared for art more than foranything else, such as wealth or ease or the opinion of the world,and that as soon as they left Oxford they would become artists.By art they meant the making of beauty for the adornment andenrichment of human life, and as artists they meant to strive againstall that was ugly or mean or untruthful in the life of their own time.
Art, as they understood it, is one single thing covering the wholeof life but practised in many special forms that differ one fromanother. Among these many forms of art there are two of principalimport