A critical biography of the great designer William Morris (1834–96) that highlights his radical and transformative vision of art.

Through close exploration of William Morris’s visual designs, poems, and stories, as well as his prolific career as a lecturer and activist and his creation of the Kelmscott Press later in life, Nicholas Frankel demonstrates Morris’s commitment to the idea of beauty as a vehicle for social transformation, justice, and heightened environmental consciousness. Art was a means for change, not an end in itself, and Morris despised the idea that it should be enjoyed by only a privileged few. This book is a portrait of the artist as a committed agent of change, and underscores Morris’s relevance to our own times, no less than to the world in which he lived.