Goals of the William Morris Archive

The goal of the William Morris Archive is to provide a complete scholarly edition of Morris's literary works online accessible to all. We seek to provide readable annotated texts of Morris’s poetry, prose romances, translations, and selected prose, prepared in accordance with contemporary scholarly and critical norms, using current technology for text-searching, manuscript presentation, and comparison of multiple versions.

Several of Morris’s contemporaries—Tennyson, Hopkins, the Brownings, and the Rossettis, for example—have benefited from full critical editions, but much of Morris’s extensive lifework had remained unedited and even ungathered for a century. The William Morris Archive (formerly the Morris Online Edition) was inaugurated in 2005 to address this need.

Although the Marxists Internet Archive (http://www.marxists.org/) and other websites usefully offer scanned versions of existing editions of Morris’s artworks and essays, the aim of the William Morris Archive is to prepare newly edited and annotated texts of Morris's literary works.

In addition, where we have found manuscripts and texts of Morris's prose otherwise unavailable, we have included them.

About the William Morris Archive:

The William Morris Archive texts are whenever possible based on collations of known manuscripts and editions published in Morris’s lifetime, as well as on the last edition Morris is known to have corrected or overseen. Insofar as is feasible, each appears with an introduction, annotations, textual notes, and images and transcriptions which make alternative formats of the text available where apposite (such as images of the manuscript and Kelmscott Press versions). For most editions an individual editor is listed, who has provided the text, introduction, variants and notes. Florence Boos has provided the links to supplementary materials.

The current general editor of the William Morris Archive is Florence Boos (florence-boos@uiowa.edu), and the Project Manager is Kimberly A. Maher (University of Iowa). The Advisory Board consists of David Latham (York University), Peter Faulkner (emeritus, Exeter University), Linda K. Hughes (Texas Christian University), William Peterson (emeritus, University of Maryland), and Phillippa Bennett (Northhampton University). The editors welcome inquiries, suggestions, and proposals for new editions.

The William Morris Archive is created in Omeka and is a member of NINES (Networked Interface for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship, www.nines.org), powered by Collex. The Archive is hosted by the University of Iowa Libraries, whose staff from the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio have assisted with web development, technological advice, and the preparation of images. Special thanks are due to Sidney Huttner, Greg Prickman, and David Schoonover of Special Collections, and Mark Anderson, Thomas Keegan, Matthew Butler and Leah Morlan of the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio. Help with design, images, and coding has been provided by many, including Karla Tonella, Kimn Gollnick, Michelle Taylor, Matt Runkle, Sean DeVega, Bailey Mikkelson, Katharine DeLamater, Krista Narcisco, and Miah Clark. We are grateful for images of manuscripts provided by the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection in Newark, Delaware and from other collections and libraries.

Follow this link to a Site Map for the Archive.

The William Morris Society

The editors and contributors of this web site work in harmony with the William Morris Societies in Britain, Canada, and the United States. We encourage you to visit the Morris Society at http://www.morrissociety.org/ , http://www.williammorrissociety.org.uk and http://www.wmsc.ca/ , to learn more about Morris and his times, see examples of Morris’s work in several media, and take an active role in the endeavors of the William Morris Society.

Historical Articles

Boos, Florence. "Where Have All the Manuscripts Gone? Morris’s Autographs in Diaspora"

Miles, Rosie. "Virtual Paradise: Editing William Morris for the Twenty-First Century," William Morris in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Phillippa Bennett and Rosie Miles, Peter Lang, 2010, 231-55.