The Birmingham Set, sometimes called the Birmingham Colony, the Pembroke Set or later The Brotherhood, was a group of students at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

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in the 1850s, most of whom were from

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

or had studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham. Their importance as a group was largely within the visual arts, where they played a significant role in the birth of the Arts and Crafts Movement: The Set were intimately involved in the murals painted on the Oxford Union Society in 1857, and members William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Charles Faulkner were founding partners of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861.

Activities and development

The group initially met every evening in the rooms of Charles Faulkner in Pembroke College, though by 1856 its dominant figure was Edwin Hatch. The primary interests of the Birmingham Set were initially literary – they were admirers of

Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's ...

in particular – and they also read the poetry of Shelley and Keats and the novels of Thackeray, Kingsley and Dickens. The turning point in the group's interests took place when Morris and Burne-Jones, and through them the rest of the group, discovered the writings of

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...

and

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...

and took to visiting English country churches and making pilgrimages to the medieval cities of France and Belgium. In 1856 members of the Set published twelve monthly issues of the '' Oxford and Cambridge Magazine'', which was created to propagate the group's views on aesthetics and social reform.

Members

* Charles Joseph Faulkner * Edward Burne-Jones * William Morris * Cormell Price * Richard Watson Dixon * Edwin Hatch *William Fulford *Harry MacDonald, brother of the MacDonald sisters

References

Bibliography

* {{Citation, last=Naylor, first=Gillian, year=1971, title=The Arts and Crafts Movement: a study of its sources, ideals and influence on design theory, publication-place=London, publisher=Studio Vista, isbn=028979580X, url-access=registration, url=https://archive.org/details/artscraftsmoveme0000nayl Arts and Crafts movement Culture of the University of Oxford Literary societies