For the first time, a joint biography of William Morris and his creative partner and wife, Jane Morris
William Morris - poet, designer, campaigner, hero of the Arts & Crafts movement - was a giant of the Victorian age, and his beautiful creations and provocative philosophies are still with us today: but his wife Jane is too often relegated to a footnote, an artist's model given no history or personality of her own.
In truth, Jane and William's personal and creative partnership was the central collaboration of both their lives. The homes they made together - the Red House, Kelmscott Manor and their houses in London - were works of art in themselves, and the great labour of their lives was life itself: through their houses and the objects they filled them with, they explored how we all might live a life more focused on beauty and fulfilment.
In How We Might Live, Suzanne Fagence Cooper explores the lives and legacies of Jane and William Morris, finally giving Jane's work the attention it deserves and taking us inside two lives of unparalleled creative artistry.
Lyrical...enjoyable - Mail on Sunday
Jane is fortunate in her biographer - The Times
Well researched and extensive - BBC History Magazine
Fascinating - The Field
Fagence Cooper succeeds, against the odds, in restoring some reality to our view of Jane Morris, giving a proper sense of a woman with striking gifts and talents identifiably her own.
Fagence Cooper succeeds, against the odds, in restoring some reality to our view of Jane Morris, giving a proper sense of a woman with striking gifts and talents identifiably her own.