HOW I BECAME A SOCIALIST

Designer, poet and artist as well as the author of the utopian novel 'News from Nowhere', William Morris (1834-1896) was one of the most original and inspiring socialist intellectuals of his generation. This collection, the first of his political writings to be published for nearly 50 years, reproduces essays and lectures. Morris examines the relationship between art and politics, the possibilities for a socialist society, and the crimes of empire among other subjects, and his writings demonstrate his profound commitment to 19th-century socialism. Other chapters include The Housing of the Poor, Philanthropists, Ireland and Italy: A Warning, Whigs, Democrats and Socialists, Why We Celebrate a Commune of Paris, and Correspondence on Communism and Anarchism among them. Morris was a reader of Marx and a friend of Engels and given how much the Arts and Crafts movement from which Morris emerged developed a reputation for the 'simple life', it is bracing to read Morris on what he regards as 'simplicity'. 'Well, but this demand of the extinction of asceticism bears with it another demand: for the extinction of luxury. Does that seem a paradox to you? It ought not to do so. What brings about luxury but a sickly discontent with the simple joys of the lovely earth?' 215pp, paperback.