Page "William Morris" Paragraph 7

Moreover, Morris began at this time to write poetry and many of his first pieces, afterwards destroyed, were held by sound judges to be equal to anything else he ever worked on.

Both Morris and Burne-Jones had come to Oxford with the intention of taking holy orders, but as they felt their way, both decided their energies were best spent on social reform.

Morris decided to become an architect.

A magazine for the better propagation of the views of the new brotherhood was at the same time projected, which was to make a specialty of social articles, besides poems and short stories.

At the beginning of 1856 the two schemes came to a head together.

Morris, having passed his finals in the previous term, was entered as a pupil at the office of George Edmund Street, one of the leading English Gothic revival architects who had his headquarters in Oxford as architect to the diocese ; and on New Year's Day the first issue of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine appeared.

The expenses of publishing were borne entirely by Morris, but he resigned the formal editorship after the first issue.

Many distinguished compositions appeared in its pages, but it gradually languished and was given up after a year's experiment.

The chief immediate result was the friendship between Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a contributor.