William Morris, perhaps best known for his writing, was also a leading influence on the arts and crafts movement in both England and America and, through the work of those who followed him, a major force in the reform of art education. He was a pioneer in the causes of historic preservation and environmentalism; his work as a typographer and printer produced some of the finest Victorian books and encouraged the revitalization of the art of printing; and his revolutionary Socialism helped shape the British party system.

Born in the village of Walthamstow, Essex, William Morris (1834-1896) was the oldest son of William (a bill broker) and Emma Shelton Morris. Morris, the product of a wealthy Evangelical family, was known from childhood to be temperamental and to prefer a solitary life. Close only to his sister Emma, Morris's youth was possessed of a romantic attachment to forests, gardens, flowers and birds which, along with his interest in medievalism, would recur in his art, poetry and fiction throughout his life. Although living only a few miles from the center of London, the Morris family had many of the features of a medieval household: brewing their own beer, baking their own bread, and observing the fourteenth-century customs of meals at high prime and Twelfth Night celebrations. Woodford Hall, where the family moved in 1840, was located on the edge of Epping Forest where Morris and his brothers wandered on foot or rode their ponies, William occasionally wearing a toy suit of armor that was given to him by his parents. This world, with its links to the past, defined the values Morris sought to preserve. The extended family sharing the common areas of a great house and its natural environs became his ideal community. In an 1883 letter to fellow Socialist Andreas Scheu, Morris characterized his early life as "the ordinary bourgeois style of comfort" and reported having been brought up "in what I should call rich establishmentarian puritanism; a religion which even as a boy I never took to."

In 1847, following the death of his father William Morris, Sr., Morris entered Marlborough College. One influence of Marlborough on Morris's intellectual development was its High Church flavor, which complemented his already well-developed love of romantic literature and the Middle Ages. Following a riot at Marlborough in late 1851, Morris left school and continued his education at home. Years later, in 1853, Morris, who aspired to a position as a High-Church Anglican clergyman, entered Exeter College at Oxford, where he met Edward Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones, later renowned as one of the greatest of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, remained Morris's closest friend throughout his lifetime. During his tenure at Oxford, Morris began to write poetry, the style of which owes much to the works of Tennyson, Keats, Browning and Chaucer. When Morris came of age in 1855, he collaborated with Edward Burne-Jones to design a walking tour of the Gothic cathedrals of Northern France; shortly thereafter, both men abandoned their studies in favor of more artistic pursuits. Two years later, Morris along with Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted the Oxford Union frescoes and in 1858 a selection of Morris's poetry was published under the title The Defence of Guenevere.

In 1859, Morris married Jane Burden, one of Rossetti's models. The marriage, though troubled, produced two daughters, Jenny and May. The following year, the famous Red House in South London was designed by commission and Morris and his artistic companions decorated it in proper medieval fashion: they built the furnishings; designed stained glass windows and textiles; and wove tapestries. By 1862 Red House was completed and Morris had begun designing wallpaper for his company Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company which represented a joint-venture among many Red House contributors.

Over the next decade Morris published some of his most well-known poetic works including The Life and Death of Jason and The Earthly Paradise. By the 1870s Morris, had made a new commitment to increasingly radical political activity which dominated his life; he sought to resolve the disparity between what is and what he imagined could be. For Morris, the Socialist movement in the 1870s represented the only way to eliminate the social and economic problems arising from the Industrial Revolution. By 1875 Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company was dissolved and reconstituted as Morris and Co. with William Morris as sole proprietor; two years later Morris founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and gave his first public lecture, the topic of which was "The Decorative Arts." The styles of Morris and Company were not always innovative; however, the firm set a standard of production that was to prove decisive in the history of British interior design.

By 1884 Morris, who had been named an honorary fellow at Exeter and declared himself publically as a socialist was actively writing on socialism and lecturing on street corners in England and Scotland. That same year he founded the Socialist League. 1891 saw the founding of Kelmscott Press and the following year, after Tennyson's death, Morris was offered - but declined - the esteemed poet laureateship. Five years later, on 3 October 1896, William Morris died in Hammersmith, Middlesex. His remains were interred in the Kelmscott Village churchyard.