This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of John Ruskin (1819-1900). The edition represents Ruskin's extraordinary literary output, ranging from lectures, essays, and treatises to reviews, correspondence, and critical notes. Ruskin has been called 'the most powerful and original thinker of the nineteenth century' and yet, like his two fellow Victorian Sages, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold, his work remains obscure to modern readers. This anthology hopes to remedy this situation by presenting the immense range of Ruskin's interests, from art to politics, museology to ornithology, architecture to geology, and morals to economics-all of which interests were indivisible in his view. Here are rapturous accounts of Turner, the Alps, Renaissance painters, and Gothic architecture; but here, too, are urgently dystopian analyses of the modern culture that we continue to inhabit: vacuousness in communication, callousness in labour relations, amoral sophistication in art, and rationalism in all its various delusory forms in politics, society, and the economy. There are special stresses on cultural preservation and the illusions that it both fosters and depends upon; the status of women in society, which Ruskin reflected on constantly; nature, wilderness, and eco-catastrophism; and the role of artists like the Pre-Raphaelites in a society mostly given over to Philistinism. In short, the nineteenth century continues to cast an interrogatory shadow over the twenty-first, and Ruskin is its most vital and critical antagonist in the English language, inspiring intellectuals as diverse as Tolstoy, Proust, and Gandhi during his lifetime and afterwards. He was, this collection suggests, nothing like a 'sage', but something much more important and much more like those impossible things, a Victorian Renaissance man, an English Rousseau, and a post-religious Jeremiah. Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Ruskin, and a Chronology.

About the Author
Richard Lansdown is a graduate of University College London. He is the author of three books on Lord Byron, one with Cambridge, the other two with Oxford University Press, and numerous articles on nineteenth-century literature, from Austen to Ibsen and Hardy to Berlioz and Delacroix. A New Scene of Thought: Studies in Romantic Realism was published in 2016, and Literature and Truth: Imaginative Literature as a Medium for Ideas in 2018, following on from The Autonomy of Literature in 2001. He taught in Finland and Australia before moving to The Netherlands in 2017.

Reviews
Recommended. Lower-divivision undergraduates through faculty. * N. Birns, CHOICE *
This is a fine work of reference. * Lawrie Groom, The Companion *
The appearance of Richard Lansdown's new, extensive anthology of Ruskin's prose is to be warmly welcomed. It comes with a chronology, useful biographical notes on the artists and architects Ruskin discusses, helpful annotation which makes links between the selected texts and others not included, and an introduction which does its best to present Ruskin on his own terms while arguing for his continuing social and political relevance...Ruskin, who maintained that a building must be read like a book, wrote books which, at their best, have all the splendors of the Gothic cathedrals he loved. Richard Lansdown's anthology provides a much-needed guided tour of these monuments. * Paul Dean, The New Criterion *
an invaluable selection ... hugely helpful annotations * Sean Sheehan, Dublin Review of Books *



Book Information
ISBN 9780192868022
Author Richard Lansdown
Format Paperback
Page Count 528
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 644g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 139mm * 28mm