Ep thompson biography of william

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E.P. Thompson

(1959)

A lecture to the Williams Morris Society, 1959.
First published in Persons and Polemics, Historical Essays by E.P.

Thompson, Merlin Press 1994, pp.66-76.
We are most grateful to Merlin Press for allowing us to put this article on the MIA.
Merlin Press (Email Orders) still has copies of Thompson’s full length biography of William Morris together with many of his other works.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.

I have in no way altered my opinion that if we are to acknowledge William Morris as one of the greatest of Englishmen it is not because he was, by fits and starts, a good poet; nor because of his influence upon typography; nor because of his high craftsmanship in the decorative arts; nor because he was a practical socialist pioneer; nor, indeed, because he was all these; but because of a quality which permeates all these activities and which giv