This volume powerfully demonstrates the range and inexhaustible vitality of Ruskin's prose and will once again become an indispensable reference for Victorianists from a range of disciplines.
Thinker, writer, artist; by turns brilliant, contradictory and erratic. An icon of the Victorian era, a man touched by the hand of genius and haunted by the spectre of madness, John Raskin was cited as an inspiration by, among Others, Tolstoy, Proust, Gandhi and, of course, Oscar Wilde. In addition to founding the discipline of modern art criticism and rescuing from obscurity such cornerstones of art history as J.M.W. Turner, he wrote prolifically, publishing over 250 works. Among his many famed theories was an expostulation that each generation boasts just a few men of genius, who differ from their contemporaries both in social relations and in their attitudes to study and the products of men. Here we collate, from across the vast body of Ruskin's work, the gems of this theory, for the benefit both of those fascinated by genius and those who might aspire to this status. --Book Jacket.
This selection from the works of the writer and critic John Ruskin (1819 1900) is designed to illustrate the development of Ruskin's personality and literary style. What emerges is an extraordinary record of Ruskin's life and times, spanning most of the nineteenth century. Beginning with his reflections on his childhood, the volume proceeds chronologically, through his education and his European travels. It includes extracts from major essays on Venice, and observations on a range of contemporary writers, artists and architects, and it finishes with a moving passage on the sorrows of old age. The selections were made by the prominent Cambridge scholar A. C. Benson from the Library Edition of Ruskin's works, and the volume was first published in 1927. Cambridge University Press is delighted to bring this classic edition back into print."
Includes two of John Ruskin's famous essays: "The Nature of the Gothic" and "The Work of Iron" from his book The Stones of Venice. Ruskin's insights into the need for individual artistic freedom, and his disdain for the mass-production art of the Victorian era, radically altered society's perception of creative design and remain powerfully relevant to our ideas of beauty today.
Volume 1-35, works. Volume 36-37, letters. Volume 38 provides an extensive bibliography of Ruskin's writings and a catalogue of his drawings, with corrections to earlier volumes in George Allen's Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin. Volume 39, general index.
A Tale of Art and Obsession Brilliant illuminator of artistic truths. Failed lover. Provocative critic of social injustice. Raving lunatic. John Ruskin was all these things. Light, Descending brings to life Victorian art and social critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), a passionate and tormented genius whose career as art critic, social reformer, and benefactor and nemesis to some of the greatest names of 19th century art ended in near-universal public acclaim - and madness. Octavia Randolph, author of the best-selling The Circle of Ceridwen Saga, portrays Ruskin's artistic genius, political struggles, and frustrated private passions in a vivid and haunting recounting of the great man's life. From his life-long defence of the painter JMW Turner, to Ruskin's unconsummated marriage to Effie Gray, to his patronage of artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his fiancee, Lizzie Siddal, and Lizzie's death by self-administered drug overdose; to Ruskin's love affair with the teenaged Rose LaTouche, and her early death, which broke Ruskin's mind; and the infamous libel trial brought against Ruskin by James McNeill Whistler, Light, Descending sweeps the reader from bustling London to a decaying Venice to wild Alpine heights as it chronicles Ruskin's ecstatic triumphs and blighted happiness. Based on letters, diary entries, and Ruskin's own voluminous published writings, and peopled with some of the most compelling personalities of the 19th century, Light, Descending is a tour-de-force novel about the man Mohandas Gandhi said "made me transform my life." Includes Book Group Discussion Guide."
In 1911, the New York Times alerted its readers to the forthcoming 'authoritative' biography of Ruskin with the words 'out of a life's devotion to Ruskin and the Herculean task of editing the definitive Ruskin, Mr E. T. Cook is to give us a definitive Ruskin biography also. It will have the authority of a brilliant Oxford scholar, combined with the charm and lightness of a style which makes Mr Cook one of the first of English journalists'. Cook had been given complete access to Ruskin's diaries, notebooks and letters by his literary executors, and Ruskin's family and friends co-operated fully with him. His depth of knowledge of, and sympathy for, his subject make Cook's biography a vital tool for anyone wishing to understand Ruskin's extraordinary achievements in so many fields. Volume 1 covers the period to 1860, the year in which the final volume of Modern Painters was published.