William Morris, the poet, art-designer, and manufacturer, was born at Elm House, Clay Hill, Walthamstow, Essex, on the 24th of March 1834. His father William Morris, a partner in the firm of Sanderson and Co., discount brokers, London, died in 1847, leaving him a considerable fortune. Young Morris was first educated at a preparatory school at Walthamstow, and afterwards at Marlborough, from whence he proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford. On leaving the University he wished to become a painter, but his studies were not sufficiently successful to warrant him carrying out his intention. He also paid some attention to the study of architecture. In 1858 he published a small volume entitled The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems, which received but little notice at the time; but The Life and Death of Jason, published in 1867, attracted general attention, and his reputation was further greatly increased by The Earthly Paradise, a poem in four volumes, which appeared in 1868-70. From that period until the time of his death Mr. Morris published a considerable number of other works, and, in collaboration with Mr. Eirikr Magnusson, some translations from the Icelandic. In 1863, in conjunction with D.G. Rossetti, E. Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown, he established a factory for the production of artistic glass, tiles, wall-paper, etc., which has greatly contributed to the improvement of household decoration in England. A large number of the designs were the work of Mr. Morris himself, his leisure hours being devoted to literature, and it has been said of him 'that his poems were by Morris the wall-paper maker, and his wall-papers by Morris the poet.'

In 1891 Morris established a printing-press near his residence, Kelmscott House, on the Upper Mall, Hammersmith, from which he issued a series of beautiful and sumptuous reprints, principally of old books, with ornamentations by himself, and illustrations chiefly by Sir E. Burne-Jones. Of these reprints, which at the present time fetch large prices, that of Chaucer's Poems is considered the finest. In 1898 the trustees of Mr. Morris published 'A Note on his aims in founding the Kelmscott Press. Together with a short description of the Press by C.S. Cockerell, and an annotated list of the books printed thereat.' The list gives fifty-three works in sixty-three volumes and nine leaflets. This was the last book printed at the Kelmscott Press. It was finished at No. 14 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, on the 4th of March 1898. In it the aims of Morris in founding the Press are given in his own words. 'I began printing books,' he writes, 'with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read, and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters.' Mr. Morris, who died at Kelmscott House on the 3rd of October 1896, collected a fine and extensive library, which passed into the hands of a Manchester collector for, it is said, the sum of twenty thousand pounds. The purchaser, after selecting the books he required—about half of the MSS. and one-third of the printed books—sent the others to Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, by whom they were sold on December 5th, 1898, and five following days. There were twelve hundred and fifteen lots in the sale, and the sum obtained for them was ten thousand nine hundred and ninety-two pounds, eleven shillings. All the books realised good prices, but the manuscripts were of greater interest and value than the printed volumes. The following are a few of the principal manuscripts, and the prices they fetched:—Testamentum Novum Latinum, SÆc. xii., vellum, handsomely illuminated, two hundred and twenty-five pounds; Hegesippus, De Excidio JudÆorum, SÆc. xii., vellum, in the original Winchester binding, one hundred and eighty pounds; Biblia Sacra Latina, written on vellum about 1280, with handsomely painted initials, one hundred and thirty-nine pounds; Biblia Sacra Latina, vellum, written about 1300 by an Anglo-Norman scribe, with finely illuminated initials, three hundred and two pounds; Josephi Antiquitates JudaicÆ et de Bello Judaico Libri, written on vellum by a French scribe in the thirteenth century, and beautifully illuminated, three hundred and five pounds; Missale Anglicanum, called the Sherbrooke Missal on account of it having belonged to the Sherbrooke family of Oxton, County Notts, a member of the family having inscribed his name in it about 1600; it was written in the fourteenth century on vellum, and has illuminated capitals and fine marginal decorations, three hundred and fifty pounds; Gratianus, Decretales, SÆc. xiv., vellum, with finely painted and illuminated initials, two hundred and fifty-five pounds; Virgilius Maro, Georgica et Æneis, written on vellum at the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century by an Italian scribe, with beautiful illuminated decorations, one hundred and sixty-four pounds; and Legenda SanctÆ CatherinÆ de Senis, SÆc. xv., vellum, handsomely illuminated, one hundred and forty-nine pounds.

Some of the more notable printed books were:—S. Hieronymi EpistolÆ, printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome in 1468, fifty-three pounds; Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis Latino-Germanicum, printed by G. Zainer at Augsburg about 1471, one hundred pounds; PtolomÆi Cosmographia, UlmÆ, 1486, ninety-one pounds; Dives and Pauper, printed by Pynson in 1493, fifty-five pounds; Higden's Policronicon, 1495, Thordinary of Crysten Men, 1502, and The Orcharde of Syon, 1519, all from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, realised respectively thirty-eight pounds, fifty pounds, and one hundred and fifty-one pounds; Hystoire du Chevallier Perceval le Galloys, Paris, 1530, seventy-nine pounds; Epistole et Evangelii et Letioni Vulgari in lingua Thoscana, Firenze, 1551, eighty-nine pounds; and the Historie of the four Sonnes of Aimon, printed by William Copland in 1554, eighty-one pounds. Among the manuscripts retained were a twelfth-century English Bestiary, for which Mr. Morris gave nine hundred pounds; the 'Windmill' Psalter, written about 1270, which cost him upwards of a thousand pounds; the Huntingdon Psalter, and the Tiptoft Missal.[Pg 428-429]