Books by Fiona MacCarthy

A gorgeous new edition of Fiona MacCarthy's ground-breaking biography of the artist-craftsman, typographer, and lettercutter, master wood-engraver, and sculptor: Eric Gill.'Fascinating on the work and fair to the man; a brilliant biography.' Independent'Scrupulous and sensitive . . . A wise and foolish English eccentric in full glory.' Observer'Full of insight and interest . . . A considerable addition to modern biography.' TimesEric Gill was the greatest English artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a typographer and lettercutter of genius and a master in the art of sculpture and wood-engraving. He was a devoted family man and key figure in three Catholic art and craft communities: yet he also believed in complete sexual freedom. In her controversial, landmark biography, originally published in 1989, celebrated biographer Fiona MacCarthy delves into the complex, dark, and contradictory sides of the man and the artist for the first time - and the result is his definitive portrait.

The concept for the Bauhaus - literally 'building house' - came from Walter Gropius, a practicing architect and one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.

Fiona MacCarthy makes a breakthrough in interpreting Byron's life and poetry drawing on John Murray's world-famous archive.She brings a fresh eye to his early years: his childhood in Scotland, embattled relations with his mother, the effect of his deformed foot on his development. She traces his early travels in the Mediterranean and the East, throwing light on his relationships with adolescent boys - a hidden subject in earlier biographies.While paying due attention to the compelling tragicomedy of Byron's marriage, his incestuous love for his half-sister Augusta and the clamorous attention of his female fans, she gives a new importance to his close male friendships, in particular that with his publisher John Murray. She tells the full story of their famous disagreement, ending as a rift between them as Byron's poetry became more recklessly controversial.Byron was a celebrity in his own lifetime, becoming a 'superstar' in 1812, after the publication of Childe Harold. The Byron legend grew to unprecedented proportions after his death in the Greek War of Independence at the age of thirty-six. The problem for a biographer is sifting the truth from the sentimental, the self-serving and the spurious. Fiona MacCarthy has overcome this to produce an immaculately researched biography, which is also her refreshing personal view.

In the spring of 1902, when the back-to-the-land movement was at its height, an exodus began to Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. East End London workmen - jewellers, silversmiths, enamellers, cavers, modellers, blacksmiths, cabinet-makers, book-binders and printers - fled from the rushed and crowded life of the big city to a rural idyll of craftsmanship and husbandry which was, at the time, all good socialists' dream. This extraordinary idealistic movement was to have a lasting impact not only on the lives of the 150 London immigrants and their leader, the architect, Charles Robert Ashbee, but also on the nature of the little town they occupied. The Guild of Handicraft had been formed in Whitechapel in 1888. It blended an attitude to art, design and manufacture with a view of how society might be changed for the better. This book traces its fortunes and misfortunes, hilarious and grave, and the many eccentrics, idealists and men of letters and the arts who were involved, including William Morris, Roger Fry, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Edward Carpenter, Holman Hunt, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lowes Dickinson and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Set in the heart of the Cotswolds, Fiona MacCarthy's account of this attempt to resolve the dilemma faced by artists and craftsmen working in a mass-produced society, documents one delightful and intriguing experiment in utopian social history.

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and described by A.S.Byatt as 'one of the finest biographies ever published', this is Fiona MacCarthy's magisterial biography of William Morris, legendary designer and father of the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement. 'Thrilling, absorbing and majestic.' Independent'Wonderfully ambitious ... The definitive Morris biography.' Sunday Times 'Delicious and intelligent, full of shining detail and mysteries respected.' Daily Telegraph'Oh, the careful detail of this marvellous book! . . . A model of scholarly biography'. New StatesmanSince his death in 1896, William Morris has been celebrated as a giant of the Victorian era. But his genius was so multifaceted and so profound that its full extent has rarely been grasped. Many people may find it hard to believe that the greatest English designer of his time - possibly of all time - could also be internationally renowned as a founder of the socialist movement, and ranked as a poet with Tennyson and Browning.In her definitive biography - insightful, comprehensive, addictively readable - the award-winning Fiona MacCarthy gives us a richly detailed portrait of Morris's complex character for the first time, shedding light on his immense creative powers as artist and designer of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, stained glass, tapestry, and books; his role as a poet, novelist and translator; on his psychology and his emotional life; his frenetic activities as polemicist and reformer; and his remarkable circle of friends, literary, artistic and political, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. It is a masterpiece of biographical art.

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, this is the biography of celebrated nineteenth-century artist Edward Burne-Jones, who - with William Morris - connects Victorian and modern art.'A triumph of biographical art.' Independent'Magnificent.' Guardian 'Rarely are biographies both as authoritative and engaging as this.' Literary ReviewThe angels on our Christmas cards, the stained glass in our churches, the great paintings in our galleries - Edward Burne-Jones's work is all around us. The most admired British artist of his generation, he was a leading figure with Oscar Wilde in the aesthetic movement of the 1880s, inventing what became an iconic 'Burne-Jones look'. Widely recognised as the bridge between Victorian and modern art, he influenced not just his immediate circle but European artists such as Klimt and Picasso.In this gripping book, award-winning biographer Fiona MacCarthy dramatically re-evaluates his art and life - his battle against vicious public hostility, the romantic susceptibility to female beauty that would inspire his work but ruin his marriage, his ill health and depressive sensibility, and the devastating rift with his great friend and collaborator, William Morris, when their views on art and politics diverged. Blending new research with a fresh historical perspective, The Last Pre-Raphaelite tells the extraordinary story of Burne-Jones: a radical artist, landmark of Victorian society - and peculiarly captivating man.

Fiona MacCarthy traces the stories of the girls who curtseyed that year, and shows how their lives were to open out in often very unexpected ways - as Britain itself changed irreversibly during the 1960s, and the certainties of the old order came to an end.