Eric Gill

A gorgeous new edition of Fiona MacCarthy's ground-breaking biography of the artist-craftsman, typographer, and lettercutter, master wood-engraver, and sculptor: Eric Gill. 'Fascinating on the work and fair to the man; a brilliant biography.' Independent 'Scrupulous and sensitive . . . A wise and foolish English eccentric in full glory.' Observer 'Full of insight and interest . . . A considerable addition to modern biography.' Times Eric Gill was the greatest English artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a typographer and lettercutter of genius and a master in the art of sculpture and wood-engraving. He was a devoted family man and key figure in three Catholic art and craft communities: yet he also believed in complete sexual freedom. In her controversial, landmark biography, originally published in 1989, celebrated biographer Fiona MacCarthy delves into the complex, dark, and contradictory sides of the man and the artist for the first time - and the result is his definitive portrait.

A former Guardian critic, Fiona MacCarthy established herself as one of the leading writers of biography in Britain with her widely acclaimed Eric Gill (1989). Her next book, William Morris (1994), won the Wolfson History Prize. Her Byron: Life and Legend (2002) has been described as 'one of the great literary biographies of our time'. She also received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Last Pre-Raphaelite (2011), and was awarded the OBE in 2009. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art. She was married to David Mellor, one of Britain's leading industrial designers. She died in 2020 at the age of 80.