William Morris (1834–1896), the legendary British arts and crafts activist, was a prolific writer and doer. At various points in his life he was celebrated as a writer, painter, designer, craftsman, socialist, preservationist, and historian. He wrote prose and essays throughout his life, but he also became an accomplished dyer, weaver, printer, and designer. In the late nineteenth century, his influence was substantial, but his stature has fragmented or even declined over the course of the twentieth. His designs for wallpaper, textiles, and books have been most enduring. Arts and crafts enthusiasts always cite him but have rarely read much of his writings or have a full command of his activities. Some scholars, such as Nikolaus Pevsner, have celebrated him as a proto-modernist, while others, such as Jackson Lears, portray him as an antimodernist. Yet familiarity with the full range of Morris’s activities reveals that his influence has been considerable in the subsequent practice and theorizing of the decorative arts. It was Morris who articulated the view that craft, the act of pleasurable skilled work, could be both a form of art and a form of political activism. Taking advantage of the special exhibition on Victorian radicals at the Yale Center for British Art in spring 2020, this seminar considers the full measure of Morris, provides a sense of his context, and explores his influence in the twentieth century.