Selected Writings

by Ruskin, John; Birch, Dinah

• ISBN13: 9780192802620
• ISBN10: 0192802623
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-06-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

John Ruskin was the most powerful and influential art critic and social commentator of the Victorian nineteenth century. A true polymath, he wrote about nature, art, architecture, politics, history, myth and much more. All of his work is characterized by a clarity of vision as unsettling and intense now as it was for his first readers. This new selection includes wide-ranging extracts of Ruskin's texts, from the early 1840s to the late 1880s, as well as representative material from each of his major works. Modern Painters, The Stones of Venice, and Sesame and Lilies are juxtaposed with less familiar writing on science and myth. An authoritative introduction outlines Ruskin's life and thought, making it clear why his writing is still relevant today. This new edition also includes a selection of Ruskin's own illustrations.

Author Biography

Dinah Birch has published widely on nineteenth-century literature, and has edited George Eliot's Middlemarch for OWC. Her books on Ruskin include Ruskin's Myths (1988), Ruskin on Turner (1990), a selection from Ruskin's Fors Clavigera (2000), and edited collections of essays: uskin and the Dawn of the Modern (1999), and Ruskin and Gender (2002) co-edited with Francis O'Gorman.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	vii
Introduction	ix
Note on the Text	xxvii
Select Bibliography	xxix
A Chronology of John Ruskin	xxxii
MODERN PAINTERS, I (1843)
Of Truth of Space	3	(3)
Of Truth of Water	6	(2)
Of Truth of Skies	8	(5)
MODERN PAINTERS, II (1846)
Of Imagination Associative	13	(3)
THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE (1849)
The Lamp of Memory	16	(12)
THE STONES OF VENICE, I (1851)
The Quarry	28	(4)
THE STONES OF VENICE, II (1853)
The Nature of Gothic	32	(32)
THE STONES OF VENICE, III (1853)
Grotesque Renaissance	64	(4)
MODERN PAINTERS, III (1856)
Of the Pathetic Fallacy	68	(14)
MODERN PAINTERS, IV (1856)
Of the Turnerian Picturesque	82	(3)
Of Turnerian Topography	85	(8)
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART: INAUGURAL ADDRESS (1858)	93	(12)
THE TWO PATHS (1859)
The Work of Iron	105	(31)
MODERN PAINTERS, V (1860)
The Hesperid Aegle	136	(4)
UNTO THIS LAST (1860)
The Roots of Honour	140	(14)
SESAME AND LILIES (1865)
Of Queens' Gardens	154	(21)
THE QUEEN OF THE AIR (1869)
Athena Chalinitis	175	(11)
LECTURES ON ART (1870)
Inaugural	186	(19)
FORS CLAVIGERA (1871-84)
Letter 20: Benediction	205	(11)
Letter 48: The Advent Collect	216	(9)
Letter 88: The Convents of St Quentin	225	(12)
THE EAGLE'S NEST (1872)
The Relation of Wise Art to Wise Science	237	(14)
PROSERPINA (1875-86)
The Flower	251	(13)
FICTION, FAIR AND FOUL (1880-1)
Scott	264	(3)
THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1884)
Lecture I	267	(12)
PRAETERITA(1885-9)
Preface	279	(1)
The Springs of Wandel	279	(15)
Joanna's Care	294	(4)
Explanatory Notes	298