Chapter 3 - Kelmscott Manor

Summary

The chapter investigates the cultural place-making of Morris’s country house, Kelmscott Manor, and the reformer’s foundational role in in bringing Kelmscott into mainstream public consciousness. He did so by means of his publications News from Nowhere (1890; 1891) and ‘Gossip about an Old House on the Upper Thames’ (1895). The chapter accords special focus to the power of the accompanying illustrations, examining the circumstances behind their creation. Morris’s hitherto unacknowledged role as the art director of the News from Nowhere frontispiece is analysed at length, arguing that he practised image-building as a counterpart to his literary method. It also argues that Morris thus endowed Kelmscott with particular connotations and symbolic values, laying the foundations for the deeply-rooted Kelmscott myth as a domestic and rural idyll. In so doing he also cemented Kelmscott’s cultural association with himself and its ongoing role as a fitting Morris memorial and as an embodiment of his ideology in relation to buildings’ and nature conservation, Arts and Crafts design ethos, and socialism.