Volume 10, Number 10 · May 23, 1968
A Universal Man
By Lewis Mumford
William Morris: His Life, Work and Friends
by Philip Henderson, with a Foreword by Allan Temko
McGraw-Hill, 388, 92 illustrations pp., $9.95
The Work of William Morris
by Paul Thompson
Viking, 300, 24 illustrations pp., $10.00
William Morris as Designer
by Ray Watkinson
Reinhold, 84, 90 illustrations pp., $16.50
William Morris is about the last Victorian figure, one would think, who could appeal to the present age; for the fashionable oppish and poppish forms of non-art today bear as much resemblance to the exuberant creativity of Morris's designs as the noise of a premeditated fart bears to a trumpet voluntary by Purcell. For all that, three books about Morris have come out this past year, and none of them treats him in a patronizing way as if he were only a romantic arts-and-craftsy dilettante who finally turned into a sentimental socialist. He is still too big to be either patronized or dismissed.
Review, 4291 words
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