William Morris Biography: Life, Timeline, Facts and Famous Designs

Designer, poet, printer, translator, businessman and campaigner. William Morris packed several lifetimes into 62 years, and the patterns he drew in Victorian London still hang in homes all over the world.

Who was William Morris, and why does he still matter? This biography walks through his life in plain language, with a full timeline, key facts, the places you can visit and the designs that made him famous. If you love his work, you can also browse our William Morris art prints, printed to order as posters, framed posters and canvas.

Where was William Morris born, and what was his childhood like?

William Morris was born on 24 March 1834 at Elm House in Walthamstow, then a village on the edge of London. His father was a successful City financier whose shares in a copper mine made the family rich. According to the V&A, that wealth gave Morris a privileged childhood and an inheritance large enough that he never needed to earn an income.

He grew up at Woodford Hall, a country house beside Epping Forest. He rode through the woods, explored old churches and read the historical novels of Walter Scott. These early loves, for landscape, old buildings and medieval romance, stayed with him for life.

His father died in 1847, and in 1848 his mother moved the family to Water House in Walthamstow. Morris lived there until 1856. Today it is the William Morris Gallery, which holds the world's largest collection of his work. As a boy he was sent to Marlborough College, where he later said he learned more from the library and the countryside than from lessons.

What happened at Oxford?

In 1853 Morris went to Exeter College, Oxford, planning a career in the church. There he met Edward Burne-Jones, who became his closest friend for life. Together they read John Ruskin and fell for medieval art.

A tour of the Gothic cathedrals of northern France in 1855 changed everything. The V&A notes that it made Morris realize he wanted a life of art, not a career in the church. He trained briefly with the architect G. E. Street, where he met Philip Webb, and in 1857 joined Dante Gabriel Rossetti's group painting murals in the Oxford Union. In Oxford he also met Jane Burden, a young woman from a poor family who sat as a model for Rossetti and for Morris.

When did William Morris marry, and what is Red House?

Morris married Jane Burden in April 1859. His friend Philip Webb designed them a home in Bexleyheath, Kent, completed in 1860. Built of warm red brick with a steep tiled roof, an orchard and a rose trellis, it became known as Red House. Burne-Jones called it the most beautiful place on earth.

Their daughters Jenny (1861) and May (1862) were born there. Friends came to help decorate it with murals, stained glass and embroidery. Red House is now cared for by the National Trust, and it is the only house Morris ever commissioned and built.

The rose trellis in its garden inspired his first wallpaper, Trellis, designed in 1862 and issued in 1864.

How did Morris and Co. begin?

Decorating Red House was so much fun that in 1861 Morris and his friends turned it into a business: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., known as the Firm. Its partners included Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb and Ford Madox Brown.

The Firm made stained glass, painted furniture, tiles, embroidery and, from 1864, wallpaper. Two big commissions in the 1860s made its name, including a new dining room at the South Kensington Museum, now the Morris Room at the V&A. Morris was only 31 when he took on that job.

In 1875 Morris took sole control and renamed the company Morris and Co. In 1881 he moved production to Merton Abbey, an old textile works on the River Wandle near Wimbledon, where fabrics were dyed, printed and woven by hand.

What kind of designer was William Morris?

Morris is remembered today as the greatest pattern designer of the Victorian age. According to the V&A he produced more than 50 wallpapers, as well as printed and woven textiles, carpets, embroideries and tapestries.

What made his patterns special was close study of nature. He drew real flowers and plants, willow, honeysuckle, acanthus, tulips and roses, and arranged them on hidden grids so they could repeat endlessly without looking mechanical.

He also cared deeply about color. In the 1870s he spent long spells at Leek in Staffordshire with the dyer Thomas Wardle, reviving natural dyes such as indigo, madder and weld. At Merton Abbey he used the slow indigo discharge method to print Strawberry Thief in 1883, one of the most expensive fabrics the firm sold and one of the most popular.

See his best known patterns, year by year, in our guide to William Morris designs.

Was William Morris a poet?

Yes, and in his own lifetime he was better known as a poet than as a designer. His first book of poems, The Defence of Guenevere, came out in 1858. His long poem The Earthly Paradise (1868 to 1870) was a bestseller.

He learned Icelandic, translated the old sagas with Eiríkr Magnússon and visited Iceland in 1871 and 1873. Between 1870 and 1875 he also wrote out and decorated 21 manuscript books by hand, including A Book of Verse for his friend Georgiana Burne-Jones.

After Tennyson died in 1892, Morris was sounded out about becoming Poet Laureate. He turned it down.

What are Kelmscott Manor, Kelmscott House and the Kelmscott Press?

Kelmscott Manor is a stone house beside the River Thames in Oxfordshire. Morris took a shared lease on it with Rossetti in 1871, and it became the place he loved most. The thrushes in its kitchen garden inspired Strawberry Thief. Today it is run by the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Kelmscott House is the family's London home by the river in Hammersmith, where they moved in 1878. Morris named it after the manor. It is now home to the William Morris Society.

The Kelmscott Press, founded there in 1891, printed books by hand with typefaces, paper and borders Morris designed himself. Its greatest book, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with woodcut illustrations after Burne-Jones, was finished in 1896, just months before his death.

What did William Morris believe in?

Morris believed beauty should be part of everyone's life, not a luxury for the rich. That belief led him into campaigning.

In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to stop old churches and houses being over restored. It still exists today. In 1883 he joined the Democratic Federation, and in 1884 he helped found the Socialist League. He wrote pamphlets, gave street corner speeches and sold newspapers.

His novel News from Nowhere (1890) imagines a future England where work is a pleasure and everyone lives among beautiful things. It is still in print.

How did William Morris die?

By the mid 1890s his health was failing. William Morris died at Kelmscott House on 3 October 1896, aged 62. One of his doctors famously said the cause was simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men.

He is buried in the churchyard of St George's at Kelmscott, under a simple tomb designed by Philip Webb. May Morris carried on his work in embroidery and editing his writings, and his assistant John Henry Dearle kept Morris and Co. going until 1940.

Because Morris died more than a century ago, his original designs are now in the public domain, free for anyone to print. Our public domain policy explains what that means for our prints.

William Morris timeline

12 surprising facts about William Morris

1. He refused to go inside the Great Exhibition of 1851 because he disliked its taste.
2. He finished only one oil painting, La Belle Iseult (1858), now at Tate. The model was Jane Burden.
3. He was richer than most designers of his time, thanks to his father's mining shares.
4. He was better known as a poet than a designer while he was alive.
5. He turned down the chance to become Poet Laureate.
6. He designed more than 50 wallpapers.
7. He taught himself to weave tapestry on a loom in his bedroom, getting up early to practice.
8. He learned Icelandic and sailed to Iceland twice.
9. He decorated a room at the V&A at just 31. It is still there.
10. He wrote out and decorated 21 books by hand.
11. He founded a charity to protect old buildings that is still working today.
12. His most famous design, Strawberry Thief, shows real thrushes that raided his garden.

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

Where can you see William Morris's work today?

Cannot make the trip? You can bring his patterns home instead. Browse our William Morris posters and William Morris canvas prints.

Last updated September 2026. Written by the William Morris Art Prints team.