Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Once the young William Morris managed to get "The Defence of Guenevere" and other Poems published in 1858, he burned all the handwritten manuscripts of it he could find. This is a bummer for modern critics and readers, who like to look at the different drafts of a poem that a writer went through before he decided on a final version to publish (source).
William Morris was kind of a grump. If he didn't like the way his meal was prepared, he'd chuck it out the window (source). Remind us never to invite him to a dinner party.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, became good friends with William Morris. They were such good buds, in fact, that Rossetti, who was a painter as well as a poet, often used Morris's beautiful wife, Jane, as a model for his paintings. Eventually they had a long and rather public affair (source). Oops.
Morris was a political idealist who thought a peaceful socialist revolution in England would solve all of the country's social problems. He became disillusioned with the direction of the Socialist Party later in his life, however, and eventually withdrew his membership (source).