Ruskin's Rose


Book Description

A Venetian love story unfolds as readers follow the true story of historian and author John Ruskin and his journey of healing in the city of Venice in 1876. Recovering from the death of his clandestine love, Ruskin rediscovers art through the paintings of 15th-century artist Vittore Carpaccio. 60 color photos and illustrations.




John Ruskin and Rose La Touche


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Parallel Lives


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In her study of the married couple as the smallest political unit, Phyllis Rose uses the marriages of five Victorian writers who wrote about their own lives with unusual candor: Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot--née Marian Evans.




Human-Built World


Book Description

To most people, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer goods, and military weapons; we speak of "technological progress" in terms of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In Human-Built World, thankfully, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the conceptual richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative potential. Hughes draws on an enormous range of literature, art, and architecture to explore what technology has brought to society and culture, and to explain how we might begin to develop an "ecotechnology" that works with, not against, ecological systems. From the "Creator" model of development of the sixteenth century to the "big science" of the 1940s and 1950s to the architecture of Frank Gehry, Hughes nimbly charts the myriad ways that technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different eras and the promises and problems it has offered. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, optimistically hoped that technology could be combined with nature to create an Edenic environment; Lewis Mumford, two centuries later, warned of the increasing mechanization of American life. Such divergent views, Hughes shows, have existed side by side, demonstrating the fundamental idea that "in its variety, technology is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences." In Human-Built World, he offers the highly engaging history of these contradictions, follies, and consequences, a history that resurrects technology, rightfully, as more than gadgetry; it is in fact no less than an embodiment of human values.




Ruskin and the Rose


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On Art and Life


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John Ruskins 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.




The Lost Companions and John Ruskins Guild of St George


Book Description

This important work in Ruskin studies provides for the first time an authoritative study of Ruskin’s Guild of St George. It introduces new material that is important in its own right as a significant piece of social history, and as a means to re-examine Ruskin’s Guild idea of self-sufficient, co-operative agrarian communities founded on principles of artisanal (non-mechanised) labour, creativity and environmental sustainability. The remarkable story of William Graham and other Companions lost to Guild history provides a means to fundamentally transform our understanding of Ruskin’s utopianism.




Growing Roses in Cold Climates


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Describes both traditional and newer methods of winter protecting roses in cold climates, offering an expanded catalog of rose plants, profiles of major clases of roses, and instructions to achive ideal growing conditions.




The Angel


Book Description

The Angel was written as a fairytale, but contains elements of truth, in the way God may possibly use angels in people's daily lives. This idea comes directly from scripture as written throughout the Bible, in which angels appeared to people, prophets, and animals. In this tale, the angel and animals are able to speak to one another and conversations flow freely. The book traces the activities of Dionysius, an angel, as he orchestrates the lives of those God entrusts to him. The story begins by explaining who Dionysius is and commences with the peculiar way in which he meets the main characters. His somewhat humorous encounter with Hercules, the large shire-horse, and Phinehas, the mastiff dog, takes place on a farm belonging to old Ma Bond. After questioning the animals, Dionysius finds the old lady and her granddaughter, little Rosie, are living in very dire circumstances. The angel, seeing the predicament, takes charge. After receiving instructions from God, he begins to arrange events to benefit Rosie, who is soon unfortunately orphaned by her grandmother's demise, her parents being deceased. The story details the incidents after her grandmother's death, introducing two more very important characters, a husband and wife, Sam and Beverly Harris, who have been praying for a child. As the tale progresses, more characters enter who help the little girl. Having no family alive and nowhere to call home, Rosie is forced to stay at the local orphanage, where she makes friends. During this time, a terrible fire disrupts life at the orphanage. Will Rosie find a new home, and will Sam and Beverly get the child they have been praying for, or will the difficulties be too great? Throughout the book, horses, dogs, and cats play an important role alongside the people, and the mastiff, Phinehas, remains Rosie's faithful companion and guardian. The angel, Dionysius, plays a vital role in everyone's lives, weaving in and out of the story at intervals, following God's instructions. The book concentrates on love, healing and forgiveness, repentance, and the salvation message, as explained in the Bible in the gospel of John, Chapter 3, where Jesus explains "....unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."




The Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place


Book Description

English art critic John Ruskin was one of the great visionaries of his time, and his influential books and letters on the power of art challenged the foundations of Victorian life. He loved looking. Sometimes it informed the things he wrote, but often it provided access to the many topographical and cultural topics he explored—rocks, plants, birds, Turner, Venice, the Alps. In The Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place, John Dixon Hunt focuses for the first time on what Ruskin drew, rather than wrote, offering a new perspective on Ruskin’s visual imagination. Through analysis of more than 150 drawings and sketches, many reproduced here, he shows how Ruskin’s art shaped his writings, his thoughts, and his sense of place.