Accounting for biodiversity in nineteenth century Britain: William Morris and the defence of the fairness of the earth

William Morris is a diffi cult man to categorise. He was a leading member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, 1 a designer, craftsman, printer, historian, poet, writer, translator of Icelandic sagas, political activist, industrialist, environmentalist and newspaper editor. He was infl uential in establishing a number of institutions such as the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Commons Preservation Society that were forerunners of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, Open Spaces Society and the National Trust (Wilmer, 1993). He was involved in the turbulent arena of Victorian socialist politics and the various schisms that emerged, yet, throughout his political activism, nature remained as important to him as social and economic issues.