William Morris (1834-1896) is the man generally credited with originating the genre of modern heroic fantasy. He was a man of many achievements - poet, novelist, artist, designer, socialist, and printer of fine books - but today he is chiefly remembered as a designer of beauty and serenity in furniture, tapestries, wallpaper, and other decorative objects, and as the author of a number of prose romances set in almost-medieval but imaginary worlds of great beauty.