William Morris

A Selection from the Poems of William Morris is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1886. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Long ago there was a little land, over which ruled a regulus or kinglet, who was called King Peter, though his kingdom was but little. He had four sons whose names were Blaise, Hugh, Gregory and Ralph: of these Ralph was the youngest, whereas he was but of twenty winters and one; and Blaise was the oldest and had seen thirty winters. Now it came to this at last, that to these young men the kingdom of their father seemed strait; and they longed to see the ways of other men, and to strive for life. For though they were king's sons, they had but little world's wealth; save and except good meat and drink, and enough or too much thereof; house-room of the best; friends to be merry with, and maidens to kiss, and these also as good as might be; freedom withal to come and go as they would; the heavens above them, the earth to bear them up, and the meadows and acres, the woods and fair streams, and the little hills of Upmeads, for that was the name of their country and the kingdom of King Peter. So having nought but this little they longed for much; and that the more because, king's sons as they were, they had but scant dominion save over their horses and dogs: for the men of that country were stubborn and sturdy vavassors, and might not away with masterful doings, but were like to pay back a blow with a blow, and a foul word with a buffet. So that, all things considered, it was little wonder if King Peter's sons found themselves straitened in their little land: wherein was no great merchant city; no mighty castle, or noble abbey of monks: nought but fair little halls of yeomen, with here and there a franklin's court or a shield-knight's manor-house; with many a goodly church, and whiles a house of good canons, who knew not the road to Rome, nor how to find the door of the Chancellor's house.

Hark the March wind again of a people is telling; Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim, That if we and our love amidst them had been dwelling My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown dim. This land we have loved in our love and our leisure For them hangs in heaven, high out of their reach; The wide hills o'er the sea-plain for them have no pleasure, The grey homes of their fathers no story to teach.

When the wife of Golden Walter betrays him for another man, he leaves home on a trading voyage to avoid the necessity of a feud with her family. However, his efforts are fruitless, as word comes to him en route that his wife's clan has killed his father. As a storm then carries him to a faraway country, the effect of this news is merely to sunder his last ties to his homeland. Walter comes to the castle of an enchantress, from which he rescues a captive maiden in a harrowing adventure...

A Dream of John Ball (1888) is a novel by English author William Morris about the English peasants' revolt of 1381 and the rebel John Ball. Like the novels close contemporary - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain - it describes a dream and time travel encounter between the medieval and modern worlds. However unlike Twain's vision of a violent and chaotic "Dark Age", Morris describes a positive image of the Middle Ages, seeing it as a golden, if brief, period when peasants were prosperous and happy and guilds protected workers from exploitation.

Gauthier d'Or, un jeune fils de marchand, part l'aventure pour chapper un mariage rat . Guid par la vision r p t e de trois personnages myst rieux, une belle Dame, une humble demoiselle et un nain atroce, il traverse les mers, chappe une temp te et se retrouve dans une terre inconnue. Bient t, Gauthier arrive dans la For t d'Oultre-Monde, un royaume ensorcel sur lequel r gne la Dame de ses visions, prot g e par un peuple de nains monstrueux. La demoiselle et un jeune prince tranger sont ses prisonniers, surveill s par le cruel Roi-nain. Aid par la demoiselle, Gauthier va tenter de percer jour les illusions et sortil ges de cette For t myst rieuse, dont les nombreux pi ges risquent tout instant de lui tre fatals. Quelles sont les intentions de la Dame, la fois autoritaire et s ductrice ? Que manigance le jeune prince ? Gauthier peut-il faire confiance la demoiselle, qui semble elle aussi dou e de pouvoirs surnaturels ? Pour accomplir son destin, Gauthier devra faire preuve de ruse autant que de courage, dans ce roman d'aventures fantastiques plein de charme et de po sie. Une lecture inoubliable, par le pr curseur de la fantasy moderne. La traduction de cet ouvrage a b n fici du soutien de la R gion Languedoc-Roussillon (www.laregion.fr)

The Roots of the Mountain J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, said that his writing was inspired and influenced by the books of William Morris. A tale of a romance that unites two long-ago peoples and of the battle to defend their freedom against invading Huns. Roots of the Mountains has all the glory and strife of war, along with a love triangle similar to the one hinted at in Lord of the Ring. If you like folklore and stories that seem to draw from ancient Norse legends and Celtic peoples, you will love this story.

William Morris had a lifelong fascination with illuminated books. He collected thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts and became one of the foremost experts on the art of bookmaking and calligraphy. Aiming to resurrect a tradition that had fallen into abeyance with the invention of printing, he made eighteen illuminated books, using a variety of texts, during the course of his life. One of these, now held in the Bodleian Library, is a handmade edition of the Odes of Horace. The pages of this book, reproduced here in high-quality facsimile, are among the most intricate and ambitious that Morris ever created. Using a Renaissance italic style of calligraphy, he illuminated letters with delicate shades of gold and silver, and adorned them with floral decoration and miniature faces and figures. The openings to each of the four books of the Odes are stunning display pages on which Morris collaborated with the artists Edward Burne-Jones and Charles Fairfax Murray. The Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE) wrote four books of lyric poetry in Latin which have subsequently been translated many times and have had an ongoing influence on Western literature. He combined descriptions of the everyday with the poetry of politics, patriotism, love and friendship, producing lines of beauty and wisdom which were very popular in Morris’s day and continue to appeal in the twenty-first century. This facsimile edition is presented in a blind embossed slipcase featuring a detail from one of Burne-Jones' paintings in the book with a companion volume containing an introduction to William Morris’s manuscript and an English translation of the Odes.

Dream of John Ball (1888) is a novel by English author William Morris about the Great Revolt of 1381, conventionally, but incorrectly (few of the participants were actual peasants), called "the Peasants' Revolt". It features the rebel priest John Ball, who was accused of being a Lollard but was really an early Leveller, the name given in the 17th century for what are today called socialists. John Ball is famed for his question "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" Morris draws on Froissart for information on the fourteenth century, but has a different attitude towards the revolting peasants from the chronicler who, Sir Walter Scott once remarked, had "marvelous little sympathy" for the "villain churls." Morris was also aware of interpretations of the Peasants' Revolt as representing a socialist tradition. In 1884 he had written an article in which he stated that "we need make no mistake about the cause for which Wat Tyler and his worthier associate John Ball fell; they were fighting against the fleecing then in fashion, viz.; serfdom or villeinage, which was already beginning to wane before the advance of the industrial gilds." The novel describes a dream and time travel encounter between the medieval and modern worlds, thus contrasting the ethics of medieval and contemporary culture. A time-traveller tells Ball of the decline of feudalism and the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Ball realizes that in the nineteenth century his hopes for an egalitarian society have yet to be fulfilled. A parallel can be drawn with the novel's close contemporary-A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain. Unlike Twain's novel, which depicted early-Medieval England as a violent and chaotic Dark Age, Morris depicts the Middle Ages in a positive light, seeing it as a golden, if brief, period when peasants were prosperous and happy and guilds protected workers from exploitation. This positive portrayal of the Medieval period is a recurring theme in Morris' literary and artistic oeuvre, from the largely pastoral and craftsman based economies of the prose romances, to his similar dream vision of Britain's utopian future, News from Nowhere (1889)................ William Morris (24 March 1834 - 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he played a significant role in propagating the early socialist movement in Britain. Born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy middle-class family, Morris came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying Classics at Oxford University, there joining the Birmingham Set. After university he trained as an architect, married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships with the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and with the Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed a family home, Red House, then in Kent, where the latter lived from 1859 to 1865, before moving to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others: the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet ARA (28 August 1833 - 17 June 1898) was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

"So why for God's sake," asked Mike Hanlin in his avuncular manner, "did Mary kill herself?" Hanlin, the seasoned ex-diplomat, perceptive but bewildered, finds himself stalking a dangerous unknown killer. The plot and setting are classically American with the pillars of the Catholic Church compromised and the establishment confused as crime piles on crime and sin on sin. The protagonists, some ruthless and some morally perplexed, fight to make sense of their own passions, hopes and fears. And at the center of it all, a young Catholic Priest, Father Sebastian, struggles to turn away from self-will and his obsession with his own appetites, and seeks only to know and to do the will of God. Through episodes of mounting revelation and a cast of curious, minor characters, the plot evolves to an unexpected climax, which revolves around the key question of who drove the Hummer that became the weapon of choice for the killer in his most audacious crime, a crime for which suspicion even falls on Hanlin himself. SPRINGFIELD THE NOVEL has all the ingredients of a classic thriller with its mouth-drying tension and cryptic style. All this alongside a landscape that sets adultery, lust and selfishness against the quest for absolute purity and a more principled world. William Morris has worked as a sheep farmer, coal miner and publisher and for the past twenty years has worked in conflict resolution, principally in the Middle East as Secretary General of The Next Century Foundation, an organization registered as a Not for Profit in London and Springfield, the city in which this novel is set. William is also Chairman of the International Communications Forum. In this capacity he has led press delegations to Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Egypt and Syria. Most recently William has been engaged in Syrian peace efforts. William also broadcasts to the Middle East on satellite television on which he has a slot that goes out weekly subtitled into Arabic. William believes that social deprivation is a key cause of many of the world's problems. He also believes in the mantra that change begins with ourselves and is a member of Initiatives of Change. He cites Oscar Wilde's maxim, "We all live in the gutter but some of us look at the Stars". William's wife Veronica was a teacher and now battles Multiple Sclerosis and works with him at the Next Century Foundation. They have three children, Joseph, Loveday and Samuel and two grandchildren, Florence and Paloma.