Morgan, William Frend de |
| POTTERY DESIGNER, PAINTER, NOVELIST, GLASS MAKER (ENGLAND) |
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BORN 16 Nov 1839, London: 69 Gower Street - DIED 15 Jan 1917, London CAUSE OF DEATH trench fever GRAVE LOCATION Brookwood, Surrey: Brookwood Cemetery (plot 024) |
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Son of the mathematician Augustus de Morgan. His mother Sophia Frend was highly intellectual and published a standard work on spiritualism, "From Matter to Spirit" (1863). During the early 1860s he met the preraphaelites Burne-Jones, Morris and Rossetti. Morris became a lifelong friend. In 1872 he started a pottery at Chelsea where he worked until 1881. In 1887 he married the painter Evelyn Pickering. His pottery still works hardly earned him a living, but his wife contributed financially to his work. From 1888 onwards he worked at Fulham. His novel "Joseph Vance" was published in 1906 after Evelyn had rescued the manuscript from the trash bin. To his own surprise it was a great success in England as well as the USA. He abandoned pottery and wrote several other novels. In 1914 he published "When Host Meets Ghost". The Victoria and Albert Museum and the William Morris Gallery, both in London, have collections of his work. Family • Wife: Morgan, Evelyn de (1887-1917) |
| Images | |
 The grave of Evelyn and William de Morgan at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking. Picture by Androom (25 Jun 2009) |
 The grave of Evelyn and William de Morgan at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking. Picture by Androom (25 Jun 2009) |
Sources • Stephen, Leslie [Sir], Sidney Lee [Sir] [Editors], The Dictionary of National Biography, From the Earliest Times to 1900, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1960 • Speel, Bob, The Website of Bob Speel, 2017 • William De Morgan - Wikipedia (EN) |
