The Genius of John Ruskin


Book Description

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.




Beauty and Belief


Book Description

This study is an important contribution to the intellectual history of Victorian England which examines the religio-aesthetic theories of some central writers of the time. Dr Fraser begins with a discussion of the aesthetic dimensions of Tractarian theology and then proceeds to the orthodox certainties of Hopkins' theory of inscape, Ruskin's and Arnold's moralistic criticism of literature and the visual arts, and Pater's and Wilde's faith in a religion of art. The author identifies significant cultural and historical conditions which determined the interdependence of aesthetic and religious sensibility in the period. She argues that certain tensions in the thought of Wordsworth and Coleridge - tensions between poetry and religion, rebellion and reaction, individualism and authority - continued to manifest themselves throughout the Victorian age, and as society became increasingly democratic, religion in turn became increasingly personal and secular.




Oscar Wilde in Context


Book Description

Concise and illuminating articles explore Oscar Wilde's life and work in the context of the turbulent landscape of his time.




To See Clearly


Book Description

'To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, religion, all in one' John Ruskin - born 200 years ago, in February 1819 - was the greatest critic of his age: a critic not only of art and architecture but of society and life. But his writings - on beauty and truth, on work and leisure, on commerce and capitalism, on life and how to live it - can teach us more than ever about how to see the world around us clearly and how to live it. Dr Suzanne Fagence Cooper delves into Ruskin's writings and uncovers the dizzying beauty and clarity of his vision. Whether he was examining the exquisite carvings of a medieval cathedral or the mass-produced wares of Victorian industry, chronicling the beauties of Venice and Florence or his own descent into old age and infirmity, Ruskin saw vividly the glories and the contradictions of life, and taught us how to see them as well.




John Ruskin


Book Description

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.




John Ruskin


Book Description




On Art and Life


Book Description

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.







John Ruskin's Continental Tour 1835


Book Description

John Ruskin's training as an interdisciplinary polymath started in childhood. He learned to memorise the Bible at his mother's knee and published his first poem aged ten. His lifelong fascination with geology found its earliest expression in journal articles from the age of fifteen, while his considerable talents as a draughtsman were developed by leading drawing masters before he was sixteen. Rather than being a prodigy in one particular field, it was his precocious mix of religion, science and art that laid the foundations for the fulfilment of his career as a critic of art, architecture and society. The cultural tours that he made with his family as he grew up provided the crucial focus for these developing interests, and the second extended tour of the Continent in 1835 at the age of sixteen in particular established the paradigm for his orchestrated representation and analysis of cultural experience along 'the old road', through France to Chamonix, and through the Swiss Alps to northern Italy as far as Venice. His diary of the journey and associated writings, together with numerous drawings he made in relation to it, are annotated and fully catalogued for the first time in this edition that includes maps and an introductory essay.