William Morris was born on March 24, 1834, at Elm House, Walthamstow. Walthamstow in those days was a village above the Lea Valley, on the edge of Epping forest, but comfortably close to Lonmdon. He was the third of nine children and the oldest son of William and Emma Shelton Morris. His famile was welltodo, and during Morriss youth became increasingly wealthy: at twentyone, Morris quite ironically, given his later political views came into an annual income of £900, quite a tidy sum in those days.William MorrisMorriss childhood was a happy one. He was spoiled by everyone, and was rather tempermental, as in fact he would be for the rest of his life: he would throw his dinner out of the window if he did not approve of the manner in which it had been prepared. He was smitten at a very early age, as many young gentlemen of his day were, with a great passion for all things mediaeval: at age four he began to read Sir Walter Scotts Waverley Novels, and he had finished them all by the time he was nine. His doting father presented him with a pony and a miniature suit of armor, and, in the character of a diminutive knighterrant, he went off on long quests into the depths of Epping Forest. He was rather a solitary child, close only to his sister Emma, and even in childhood was possessed of a romantic attachment to forests and gardens and flowers and birds which, with his interest in mediaevalism, would recur in his art, his poetry, and his fiction for the rest of his life.

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