 William Morris (1834–1896) was the towering figure in late 19th-century design and the main influence on the Arts and Crafts movement.The aesthetic and social vision of the movement grew out of ideas that he developed in the 1850s with the Birmingham Set – a group of students at the University of Oxford including Edward Burne-Jones, who combined a love of Romantic literature with a commitment to social reform.By 1855, they had discovered Ruskin.