In his later years, Morris became an active and respected lecturer and writer on social and cultural themes, the successor to Carlyle and Ruskin. He published two volumes of these writings in his lifetime, "Hopes and Fears for Art" in 1882 and "Signs of Change" in 1888. Since it was in 1883 that he committed himself to Socialism, the two volumes read together show clearly the development of his political-cultural thinking. All the lectures deal, in clear and vigorous English, with issues of work, ecology and society that are still of central concern today.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Born in London in 1834, William Morris was a radical thinker whose democratic vision for society and art has continued to influence designers, artists and writers to this day, long after his death in 1896. He was a gifted poet, architect, painter, writer and textile designer, who also founded the Kelmscott Press, the most famous of the Arts and Crafts private presses. Morris' ideas later came to influence the Garden City movement, as well as numerous artists and craftspeople, who sought to negotiate a viable place within the modern world in the troubled years that followed the First World War. His ideals inspired designers, including those who contributed to the 1951 Festival of Britain, with a direct sense of mission to bring the highest design standards within the reach of everyone. During Morris' lifetime, Oscar Wilde thought him a master of all exquisite design and of all spiritual vision, while forty years after Morris' death George Bernard Shaw observed: He towers greater and greater above the horizon beneath which his best advertised contemporaries have disappeared. This collection of quotations by Morris, his friends, associates and those who came after, reveals and explores his passionately held view that beautiful, functional design should be accessible to all.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)