In 1858, after he
had left Oxford, he brought out a volume of poems called, after the
title of the first poem in the book, "The Defence of Guenevere." Soon
afterwards he founded, with some of his old Oxford friends and others
whom he had made in London, among whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the
leading spirit, the firm of Morris and Company, manufacturers and
decorators. His business, in which he was the principal and finally
the sole partner, took up the main part of his time. He had also
married, and built himself a beautiful small house in Kent, the
decoration of which went busily on for several years. Among all these
other occupations he almost gave up writing stories, but never ceased
reading and thinking about them. In 1865 he came back to live in
London, where, being close to his work, he had more leisure for other
things; and between 1865 and 1870 he wrote between thirty and forty
tales in verse, containing not less than seventy or eighty thousand
lines in all. The longest of these tales, "The Life and Death of
Jason," appeared in 1867. It is the old Greek story of the ship Argo
and the voyage in quest of the Golden Fleece. Twenty-five other tales
are included in "The Earthly Paradise," published in three parts
between 1868 and 1870.
During these years Morris learned Icelandic, and his next published
works were translations of some of the Icelandic sagas, writings
composed from six to nine hundred years ago, and containing a mass of
legends, histories and romances finely told in a noble language.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25