William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of William Morris, known in his lifetime for his poetry and then his contribution to the Arts and Crafts movement, and increasingly for his political activism. He felt the world had given in to drudgery and ugliness and he found inspiration in the time before industrialisation, in the medieval life which was about fellowship and association and ways of working which resisted the division of labour and allowed the worker to exercise his or her imagination. Seeing a disconnection between art and society, his solution was revolution which in his view was the only way to reset their relationship.
Guests
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Ingrid Hanson No other episodes
Lecturer in 18th and 19th Century Literature at the University of Manchester -
Marcus Waithe No other episodes
University Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College - Jane Thomas
4 episodes
Professor of Victorian and Early 20th Century Literature at the University of Hull
Reading list
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William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings
Caroline Arscott (Yale University Press, 2008) Google Books → -
William Morris in the Twenty-First Century
Phillippa Bennett and Rosie Miles (eds.) (Peter Lang, 2010) Google Books → -
The Making of British Socialism
Mark Bevir (Princeton University Press, 2011) Google Books → -
William Morris and News from Nowhere: A Vision for Our Time
Stephen Coleman and Paddy O'Sullivan (eds.) (Green Books, 1990) Google Books → -
William Morris: His Life and Work
Stephen Coote (Third Millennium Press Ltd, 2018) Google Books → -
Against the Age: An Introduction to William Morris
Peter Faulkner (Routledge, 2012) Google Books → -
William Morris: Centenary Essays
Peter Faulkner and Peter Preston (eds.) (University of Exeter Press, 1999) Google Books → -
William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas
Ian Felce (D. S. Brewer, 2018) Google Books → -
William Morris and the Uses of Violence, 1856-1890
Ingrid Hanson (Anthem, 2013) Google Books → -
William Morris's Utopianism: Propaganda, Politics and Prefiguration
Owen Holland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Google Books → -
The Concept of Utopia
Ruth Levitas (Peter Lang, 2011) Google Books → -
William Morris: A Life for Our Time
Fiona MacCarthy (Faber and Faber, 1994) Google Books → -
The Collected Works of William Morris
William Morris (ed. May Morris) (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Google Books → -
Political Writings: Contributions to Justice and Commonweal, 1883-1890
William Morris (ed. Nicholas Salmon) (Thoemmes, 1994) Google Books → -
William Morris
Linda Parry (ed.) (Philip Wilson and the V & A, 1996) Google Books → -
William Morris: Textiles
Linda Parry (V&A Publishing, 2013) Google Books → -
We Met Morris: Interviews with William Morris, 1885-96
Tony Pinkney (ed.) (Spire, 2005) Google Books → -
Oscar Wilde in Context
Peter Raby and Kerry Powell (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Google Books → -
Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts
Peter Stansky (Premier Book Marketing Ltd, 1996) Google Books → -
From William Morris to Sergeant Pepper: Studies in the Radical Domestic
Peter Stansky (Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1999) Google Books → -
William Morris, Romantic to Revolutionary
E. P. Thompson (Merlin Press, 1977) Google Books → -
William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Home
Pamela Todd (Thames & Hudson, 2012) Google Books → -
William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880-1914
Anna Vaninskaya (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) Google Books → -
William Morris's Utopia of Strangers: Victorian Medievalism and the Ideal of Hospitality
Marcus Waithe (D. S. Brewer, 2006) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b0b9w0vq
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b9w0vq
Auto-category: 700 (Arts and Recreation)