Graphic Novel Review: If I Could But See It: A Graphic Biography of William Morris by Nick Thorkelson

 reviewed by Lee Stephanie Roscoe

Nick Thorkelson. If I Could But See It: A Graphic Biography of William Morris. Edited by Paul Buhle and Mari Jo Buhle. London: Pluto Press, 2026. https://www.plutobooks.com/product/if-i-could-but-see-it/

 

I have never read graphic books, save for Maus, though was a huge fan of Kliban's cartoon Cat books, and of Peanuts, while George Grosz’s savage cartoon caricatures in Ecce Homo were a huge influence on my world view (and my short film, The Warning)—so writing a review of Nick Thorkelson’s nonfiction comic book on the life of William Morris  without immersion in knowledge of the history of this kind of art seems a bit of a stretch for me. 

 

What I do know is that it takes one Renaissance man to know another. Thorkelson is a practitioner of many arts himself, cartoonist, animator, painter, musician, even as Morris was a poet, publisher, editor, architect and perhaps most famously, textile designer (but also designer of stained glass, furniture, books and more)—a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Craft movement. And they share activism towards social and economic justice.

Thorkelson’s book takes us from Morris’s childhood as the son of privilege who father was as a capitalist financier and mine owner -- one of the very oppressors of the working class and defiler of earth Morris would later rail against -- to his college years where he found a life-long circle of friends and co-creators. Thorkelson illustrates how Morris’s reading, his travels, his friends, opened his eyes to horrors of 19^th century industrial civilization, its inequities to humans, its defilement of earth and nature. Striving to cast off what was modern in his time, he was inspired by the churches of Gothic style and the writing of John Ruskin, to, with his circle of friends including  Edward “Ned” Burne-Jones, and poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, create a return to hands-on artisanship which would make houses, furniture, wall coverings accessible to the working man. Ideally with this philosophy participants would attempt to handcraft most of one’s needs and surroundings, thus living a fulfilling, beautiful, and self-provisioned life.

We follow Morris’s epiphanies through the book, his continuous opposition to industrial civilization, and the capitalist order out of which it grew, and his journey towards artisanship to counter the machine age with its exploitation of labor and dirtying of nature by the factories which were anathema to him.

We see the contradictions in his practice—he had rejected becoming a cleric yet found a pagan joy in the Gothic symbolism first created by the church. He wanted to equalize access to art in life, yet it was the wealthy who often commissioned his design company, while the contrast between the luxury of the “Red House” in which he first lived—and the impoverishment of many of his fellow humans was undeniable. His aesthetic, as we see in the book, coupled with an awareness of current events such an uprising in Bulgaria which foreshadowed Marxism with its aspirations for land redistribution, pushed almost inevitability to Morris’s espousing of socialism. We see the circles he travels in, the illustrious fellowship of other socialists such as George Bernard Shaw (albeit before Shaw’s own “becoming” as a playwright). Morris becomes a socialist activist and a founder of socialist organizations as he seeks justice for the working class, traveling through high-flown rhetoric, speeches, slogans and doggerel poetry meant to arouse the masses, arriving at last to some actions which do benefit them --  as all the while his idealism seeks and wishes for a peaceful, artful and equable life for everyone. In the end he returns to creativity as his eternal panacea for the world's ills.

Throughout we get glimpses of Morris’s liberal love affair with his first model, Jane Burden, who became his wife -- famously idealized in many painted images by Rossetti and Burne-Jones, from Persephone to La Belle Iseult. We are first introduced to her working-class background in a funny parsing of her father’s lower-class speech. Thorkelson illustrates Morris' family life, his daughters, and Morris and Jane’s complex Bohemian relationship. He touches on her susbstantial contribution to the creation of designs for Morris's companies, as well as her love affairs with other than her husband..

Thorkelson’s colorful drawings/paintings render beautifully the medievalist/romanticist sensibility of Morris. His graphics cartoonize the main characters but often within lush backgrounds which evoke a contrast between the clutter of an age of dirt-spewing factories, handmaidens of exploitative capitalism, and the natural and political idylls created by or dreamt of by Morris and his cohorts. We enter the mind of Morris; we partake of conversations he may well have had. We see quotes rendered from his prolific writings. The scholarship is excellent, taking the reader into this distant and multi-faceted world of creation, romance,  and political engagement. 

After the main tale, there’s a section of cartoons by Sharon Rudahl parodying the style of Morris’s  Arthurian fantasies and print styles as she changes Pre-Raphaelite finesse into crude proletariat pictures. An insightful afterward by the editors speaks to Morris’s influence on the Arts and Crafts movement, with such as Gustave Stickley and his Craftsman homes, and with comments on other socialist artists who followed in Morris's steps.

On page 10 there is a cast of some characters but I wish there had been a complete cast of characters at the beginning so I would more quickly have understood who Ned or Top was, and better be able to separate and enter the lives of the characters Thorkeslon draws. I’d love some more clarification on the mix and match relationships of lovers or would-be lovers such as  Burne-Jones’s wife and Morris. But it is likely that any confusion is my own lack of knowledge and newness to this art form. The cinematic scope of the drawings and text and its fascinating context will take me back to it again to peruse its characters, to discover more details within its artworks. The book is an exciting introduction for me into the world of cartoon art history books.