The Birmingham Set, sometimes called the Pembroke Set or later The Brotherhood, was a group of students at the University of Oxford in England in the 1850s, most of whom were from Birmingham or had studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham.[1] The group initially met every evening in the rooms of Charles Faulkner in Pembroke College,[2] though by 1856 its dominant figure was Edwin Hatch.[3]
The primary interests of The Set were literary - they were admirers of Tennyson in particular.[1] Their importance as a group was largely within the visual arts, however, 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 Morris, Burne-Jones and Faulkner were founding partners of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861.