Selected Writings

by John Ruskin

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199539243
• ISBN13: 9780199539246
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Art and Insight...

I personally came to a knowledge, reading, andstudy of John Ruskin late -- only during thispast half year. Though I had come across quotesattributed to him on various subjects, and thoughI had heard mentions of him on various culturalprograms, still nothing enticed me or intriguedme enough to follow up -- until I came upon two quotes from him in two very provocative sources. The first source was in the ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA (1994)in an article on "Dante Alighieri." The quotereads: "Each age has admired Dante for differentreasons. His contemporaries and immediate successorsdwelt on his rhetorical skill and ethical content;the early 19th century admired his "Gothic" grandeur;modern critics have delighted in the sharpness and variety of his imagery and the subtlety with which he mingles suggestive allegory with realism. * * *Ruskin, speaking surely not for his own time alone,wrote, 'I think the central man of all the world,as representing IN PERFECT BALANCE the imaginative,moral, and intellectual faculties, all at theirhighest, is Dante.'" The other quote is found in Jane Ellen Harrison'swondrous and elegant presentation of Greek mythand ritual study -- PROLEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OFGREEK RELIGION. 1903/1908/1922; rpt. PrincetonUniv. Press, 1991; Mythos Books. That quote fromthe beginning of Chapter 1 says: "In characterizingthe genius of the Greeks, Mr. Ruskin says: 'thereis no dread in their hearts; pensiveness, amazement,often deepest grief and desolation, but terror never.Everlasting calm in the presence of all Fate, andjoy such as they might win, not indeed from perfectbeauty, but from beauty at perfect rest." This Everyman edition of Ruskin's SELECTED WRITINGSis also a must-have for one's personal library.There are wonderful footnotes and notes in the back,as well as a very helpful chronology. There arealso extremely insightful and helpful editorialcomments and segues within the text itself whichhighlight and explain Ruskin's insights and evolvingcreativity. Ruskin's writings are so extensive andfill so many volumes, that though there may be afew overlaps of same excerpts in various collections,they are usually at a minimum. That is why I wasglad to purchase several different collections ofhis writings -- and so far, there is more thanenough new material in each one to have made thepurchases valuable. One of the quotes which I especially like from thisvolume is this one: "For the artist who sincerely chooses the noblest subject will also choose chiefly to represent what makes that subject noble, namely, the various heroism or other noble emotions of the persons represented. If, instead of this, the artist seeks only to make his picture agreeable by the composition of its masses and colours, or by any other merely pictorial merit, as fine drawing of limbs, it is evident, not only that any other subject would have answered his purpose as well, but that he is unfit to approach the subject he has