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William Morris (1834-1896) was one of the most influential thinkers and artists of his time. At Oxford, with the painter Burne-Jones, he fell under the influence of Ruskin and Rossetti. Preoccupied with the poverty of modern design he taught himself at least thirteen crafts and founded his own design firm, Morris & Co. In the late 1870s he became active in political and environmentalist matters and converted to socialism in 1883, helping to found the Socialist League a year later. Clive Wilmer read English at King's College, Cambridge. He also edited Ruskin and Rossetti for the Penguin Classics, and has translated poetry from several languages.
First published in 1890 and now republished in paperback, this is Morris's magnum opus, a utopian picture of a future communist society which draws on the work of Ruskin and Marx and was written in response to what Morris saw as soulless and mechanical visions of socialism. In an era that has seen the collapse of state socialism, this book gives us a powerful insight into just why the statist version of socialism failed and offers us a vision for our own time of a non-collectivist society in which small-scale forms of cooperation avoid the damaging consequences of rampant individualism and unregulated global capitalism. And it's a good read. (Kirkus UK)
