E. P. Thompson: William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, rev. ed. (1955/1977)

This biographical study is a window into 19th-century British society and the life of William Morris—the great craftsman, architect, designer, poet, and writer—who remains an influential figure to this day. This account chronicles how his concern with artistic and human values led him to cross what he called the “river of fire” and become a committed socialist—committed not only to the theory of socialism but also to the practice of it in the day-to-day struggle of working women and men in Victorian England. While both the British Labor Movement and the Marxists have venerated Morris, this legacy of his life proves that many of his ideas did not accord with the dominant reforming tendencies, providing a unique perspective on Morris scholarship.

First published by The Merlin Press, London, 1955
Publisher Pantheon Books, New York, 1977
ISBN 0394733207
829 pages

Review (Eli Zaretsky, Studies in Romanticism, 1977)
Review (Patrick Parrinder, Science Fiction Studies, 1980)
Thompson’s lecture on Morris to the Williams Morris Society (1959)

Publisher (new edition, 2011)

PDF (109 MB, no OCR)
See also Morris’ novel News from Nowhere (1890/93) in the Internet Archive.

Reyner Banham: Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 2nd ed. (1960/1967)

First published in 1960, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age has become required reading in numerous courses on the history of modern architecture and is widely regarded as one of the definitive books on the modern movement. It has influenced a generation of students and critics interested in the formation of attitudes, themes, and forms which were characteristic of artists and architects working primarily in Europe between 1900 and 1930 under the compulsion of new technological developments in the first machine age.

Publisher Praeger, New York and Washington, 1960
Second edition, 1967; Second printing, 1970
338 pages

Review (Robert Gardner-Medwin, The Town Planning Review, 1961)
Review (Dennis Young)
Review (Caroline S. Lebar, 2012)
Review (of the 2009 French edition, Hugues Fontenas, Critique d’art, 2010, in French)
Commentary (Gillian Naylor, Journal of Design History, 1997)
Commentary (Nigel Whiteley, 2005)

PDF (50 MB, no OCR)

Gyorgy Kepes: Language of Vision: Painting, Photography, Advertising-Design (1944–) [EN, ES, DE]

Noted painter, designer, theoretician Gyorgy Kepes analyzes the effect of visual language on the structure of human consciousness, in particular how the elements of line and form are perceived and how innovative types of perspective can lead to more dynamic representations in art. Over 300 photographs, drawings and illustrations.

With introductory essays by Siegfried Giedion and Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
First published in 1944
Publisher Paul Theobald, Chicago, 1969
228 pages

Commentary: Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller (1999), Leigh Anne Roach (Ph.D. dissertation, 2010).

Language of Vision (English, 1944/1969, 33 MB, no OCR)
El Lenguaje de la visión (Spanish, trans. Enrique L. Revol, 1969, added on 2017-6-21 via Valericke)
Sprache des Sehens (German, trans. Renate Pfriem and Almut v. Wulffen, 1971, 20 MB, added on 2019-12-3 via ARCH)