The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin Edited by Francis O’Gorman Frontmatter More Information

Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-05489-9 - The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin Edited by Francis O’gorman Frontmatter More information

the cambridge companion to john ruskin

John Ruskin (1819–1900), one of the leading literary, aesthetic, and intellectual figures of the middle and late Victorian period, and a significant influence on writers from Tolstoy to Proust, has established his claim as a major writer of English prose. This collection of essays brings together leading experts from a wide range of disciplines to analyse his ideas in the context of his life and work. Topics include Ruskin’s Europe, architecture, technology, autobiography, art, gender, and his rich influence even in the contemporary world. This is the first multi-authored expert collection to assess the totality of Ruskin’s achievement and to open up the deep coherence of a troubled but dazzling mind. A chronology and guide to further reading contribute to the usefulness of the volume for students and scholars.

francis o’gorman is a professor in the School of English at the University of Leeds and the author of Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History (2015). His other recent publications include editions of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Sylvia’s Lovers (2014), Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage (co-edited with Katherine Mullin, 2014), and Ruskin’s Praeterita (2012), as well as The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture (2010).

A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book.

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-05489-9 - The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin Edited by Francis O’gorman Frontmatter More information

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO JOHN RUSKIN

edited by FRANCIS O’GORMAN

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107674240 © Cambridge University Press 2015 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2015 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin / edited by Francis O’Gorman. pages cm. – (Cambridge Companions to literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-107-05489-9 (hardback) – isbn 978-1-107-67424-0 (paperback) 1. Ruskin, John, 1819–1900 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Ruskin, John, 1819–1900 – Appreciation. 3. Ruskin, John, 1819–1900 – Inﬂuence. 4. Ruskin, John, 1819–1900. 5. Authors, English – 19th century – Biography. I. O’Gorman, Francis, editor. II. Title: Companion to John Ruskin. pr5264.c36 2015 828’.809–dc23 2015021266 isbn 978-1-107-05489-9 Hardback isbn 978-1-107-67424-0 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Stephen Wildman Director and Curator Ruskin Library and Research Centre University of Lancaster UK With gratitude

CONTENTS

List of illustrations ix Notes on contributors xi Acknowledgements xiv Note on the principal contents of the Library Edition xv Chronology xvii List of abbreviations xxiii

1 Introduction 1 francis o’gorman

part i places

2 Edinburgh–London–Oxford–Coniston 17 keith hanley

3 The Alps 32 emma sdegno

4 Italy 49 nicholas shrimpton

5 France and Belgium 66 cynthia gamble

part ii topics

6 Art 83 lucy hartley

7 Architecture 100 geoffrey tyack

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contents

8 Politics and economics 116 nicholas shrimpton

9 Nation and class 130 judith stoddart

10 Religion 144 francis o’gorman

11 Sexuality and gender 157 sharon aronofsky weltman

12 Technology 170 alan davis

part iii authorship

13 Ruskin and Carlyle 189 david r. sorensen

14 Lecturing and public voice 202 dinah birch

15 Diary journals, correspondence, autobiography, and private voice 216 martin dubois

16 Creativity 230 clive wilmer

part iv legacies

17 Political legacies 249 stuart eagles

18 Cultural legacies 263 marcus waithe

Guide to further reading 279 Index 286

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ILLUSTRATIONS

1. John Ruskin, Glacier des Bois, Chamonix,c.1856. RF, Ruskin Library, Lancaster University. Reproduced with permission. 36 2. John Ruskin, The Gates of the Hills, detail from The Pass of St Gothard near Faido, Switzerland, after J. M. W. Turner, 1855. Watercolour on paper. CGSG00105: Collection of the Guild of St George, Museums Shefﬁeld. Reproduced with permission. 39 3. John Ruskin, Church at Dijon, 1833. Reproduced courtesy of Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Lakeland Arts Trust, Kendal, Cumbria. 69 4. J. M. W. Turner, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon coming on), 1840. Oil on canvas, 90.8 × 122.6cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 99.22. Reproduced with permission. 85 5. Fra Angelico, Ancilla Domini. vii. Frontispiece. Engraving by W. Holl. Library Edition, vii. frontispiece. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 94 6. John Ruskin after Tintoretto, Advanced Naturalism. Library Edition,v.398. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 95 7. John Ruskin, Decoration by Disks, Palazzo dei Badoari Partecipazzi. Library Edition, ix.288. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 105 8. Benjamin Woodward, The Oxford Museum, 1858. Library Edition, xvi.216. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 108 9. Comparison of engravings of J. M. W. Turner’s By the Brook-side (Richmond from the Moors, made for Turner’s England and Wales series of engravings) by J. C. Armytage under Ruskin’s supervision (above), and by J. T. Willmore

list of illustrations

under Turner’s supervision (below). Library Edition, vii.128. (Image: Alan Davis.) 179 10. Wood engraving after Frederick Sandys’s Until Her Death, Good Words, 1863 (above), with enlarged detail (below). (Image: Alan Davis.) 183 11. The Last Furrow. Library Edition, xxii.352. (Image: Alan Davis.) 185 12. John Ruskin, The Vine: Free, and in Service, 1853, from The Stones of Venice II. Plate VI, Library Edition x.115. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 235 13. David and Lida Cardozo Kindersley, The Ruskin Gallery, green slate, painted and gilded. Collection of the Guild of St George, Museums Shefﬁeld, 1985. Reproduced with permission. 268

CONTRIBUTORS

dinah birch is Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of English Literature at Liverpool University. Her publications include Ruskin’s Myths (1988) and Ruskin on Turner (1990), together with a selected edition of Fors Clavigera (2000) and John Ruskin: Selected Writings (2004). Her study of nineteenth-century educational ideals, Our Victorian Education, appeared in 2008. She is General Editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature (7th edn, 2009).

alan davis is editor of The Ruskin Review and Bulletin and Honorary Visiting Researcher at the Ruskin Library and Research Centre (Lancaster University), with a special interest in Ruskin, Turner, and printmaking. He has curated exhibitions at the Ruskin Library including ‘A Pen of Iron’: Ruskin and Printmaking (2003), Ruskin’s Organic Vision (2005), and Ruskin and the Persephone Myth (2007).

martin dubois is a Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Newcastle. He has published articles on a range of Victorian writers, including Hopkins and William Barnes, and is currently completing a monograph on Hopkins and the poetry of religious experience.

stuart eagles isSecretaryoftheGuildofStGeorge.Hisﬁrst book, After Ruskin (2011), explores Ruskin’s social and political legacies in Great Britain up to 1920.In2010, he gave the Ruskin Lecture on the subject of ‘Ruskin and Tolstoy’ and he continues to work on Ruskin’s reception in Russia and elsewhere in Europe.

cynthia gamble is Chairman of the Ruskin Society and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. She writesandlecturesonAnglo-French crosscurrents with Ruskin and Proust as foundations of her interdisciplinary research. Her books include Proust as Interpreter of Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (2002), John Ruskin, Henry James and the Shropshire Lads (2008), L’oeil de Ruskin: l’exemple de la Bourgogne (2011), and Wenlock Abbey 1857–1919: A Shropshire Country House and the Milnes Gaskell Family (2015).

notes on contributors

keith hanley is Professor of English literature at Lancaster University, where he directed the Ruskin Centre, 2000–8. His books include John Ruskin’s Romantic Tours 1837–1838: Travelling North (2007) and, with J. K. Walton, Constructing Cultural Tourism: John Ruskin and the Tourist Gaze (2010) as well as Ruskin’s Struggle for Coherence (co-ed with Rachel Dickinson 2008). An edition of John Ruskin’s Continental Tour, 1835: The Written Records and Drawings is forthcoming.

lucy hartley is Professor of English at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge, 2001), and has published essays on aesthetics and democracy as well as on a critical bibliography of John Stuart Mill. She is currently editing a collection of essays entitled The History of British Women’s Writing, 1830–1880 and recently completed a new book, The Interest in Beauty: Art and Public Political Life in Nineteenth-Century Britain.

francis o’gorman published Late Ruskin: New Contexts in 2001 and edited Ruskin and Gender (2002) with Dinah Birch. He is the author most recently of Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History (2015) and editor of Ruskin’s Praeterita (2012), the Oxford Twenty-First Century Authors Algernon Charles Swinburne (2016), and Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (2016). He edited The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture (2010) and is currently a Professor in the School of English at the University of Leeds.

emma sdegno teaches Victorian literature at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. She has published several essays on Ruskin and British travel culture. Her books include Ruskin, Venice and 19th-Century Cultural Travel (2010, edited with Keith Hanley) and John Ruskin’s Écrits sur les Alpes (2013, edited with Claude Reichler). She translated into Italian Ruskin’s Guide to Principal Pictures in the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice 1877 (2014, edited by Paul Tucker).

nicholas shrimpton is an Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. His most recent publications are Ruskin and ‘War’ (2014), and editions of Anthony Trollope’s An Autobiography (2014) and The Warden (2014). His other writing on Ruskin includes the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on his work (15th edn, 2002 printing, and EB On-Line) and ‘Ruskin and the Aesthetes’ in Ruskin and the Dawn of the Modern (1999, edited by Dinah Birch).

david r. sorensen is Professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia. He is Senior Editor of the Duke-Edinburgh Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Duke, 1970–ongoing) and has co-edited Carlyle’s French Revolution (1989), The Newly Selected Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle (2004), The Carlyles at Home and Abroad (2004), and Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-Worship (2013).

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notes on contributors

judith stoddart is a faculty member in English and associate dean of the Graduate School at Michigan State University. Her work includes Ruskin’s Culture Wars: ‘Fors Clavigera’ and the Crisis of Liberalism (1998), essays on Victorian visuality, sentimentality, and theories of the public sphere, and a book project, Pleasures Incarnate: The Aesthetic Project of British Sentimentality, 1830s-1930s. Her current research is on late-Victorian and modernist theories of personality.

geoffrey tyack is a Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford, Director of the Stanford University Centre in Oxford, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. His books include Sir James Pennethorne and the Making of Victorian London (1992), Oxford: An Architectural Guide (1998), and John Nash: Architect of the Picturesque (2013). He contributed a chapter to Ruskin and Architecture (2003, edited by R. Daniels and G. Brandwood) and is co-editor of George Gilbert Scott: An Architect and His Inﬂuence (2014).

marcus waithe is a Fellow in English and a University Senior Lecturer at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is the author of William Morris’s Utopia of Strangers: Victorian Medievalism and the Ideal of Hospitality (2006). His recent work includes essays on Ruskin, Carlyle, Empson, William Barnes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Geoffrey Hill. In 2011 he launched Ruskin at Walkley,a web-based reconstruction of St George’s Museum, available at www.ruskinatwalk ley.org.

sharon aronofsky weltman, Davis Alumni Professor of English at Louisiana State University, is the author of two books: Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education (2007) and Ruskin’s Mythic Queen: Gender Subversion in Victorian Culture, named Outstanding Academic Book by Choice magazine in 1999. She also guest-edited a special issue on Ruskin for Nineteenth-Century Prose in 2008.

clive wilmer is an Emeritus Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Master of the Guild of St George, the charity founded by Ruskin in 1871. He edited John Ruskin’s Unto This Last and Other Writings (1985), and is the author of several books of poetry, including New and Collected Poems (2012) and Urban Pastorals (2014).

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editor is grateful to the following for their support for this volume, advice, and encouragement: Anna Bond, Linda Bree, Bernard Richards, Paul Tucker, and Stephen Wildman. I’m also grateful to all the contributors for the helpful discussions we had about the shape and scope of the volume. I want to add my thanks for the interest and intellectual stimulation, over many years, of Van Akin Burd, Jeanne Clegg, James S. Dearden, Robert Hewison, Graham Huggan, Jim Spates, Jane Wright, and members of the Ruskin Seminar at the University of Lancaster and my fellow Directors of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (http://tundra.csd.sc.edu/vllc). I’d like to thank my family, John and Joyce O’Gorman, and Chris and Michelle O’Gorman, for their hugely generous support. I’d also like to thank Kate Williams for making sure that this book happened after all and for much else besides. Ruskin’s writing exists in a variety of different forms: in print, in digital surrogates, and in a substantial body of important material that remains in MS form. Material cited by Cynthia Gamble from the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University (marked as RF for Ruskin Foundation), is quoted with permission. The Ruskin Foundation, which has care of these materials, has sought to establish the copyright for Ruskin’s unpublished literary manu- scripts but has been unable to do so on the basis of all the information currently known to it. The Foundation, through the Library at Lancaster, would therefore welcome contact from any person or persons who can show they hold this copyright.

Francis O’Gorman York

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NOTE ON THE PRINCIPAL CONTENTS OF THE LIBRARY EDITION

In order to avoid cluttering parenthetical references with additional text, references to the Library Edition are to volume and page number only. Below is an outline list of the main works in each volume for ease of reference.

i. Early Prose Writings ii. Poems iii. Modern Painters I(1843) iv. Modern Painters II (1846) v. Modern Painters III (1856) vi. Modern Painters IV (1856) vii. Modern Painters V(1860) viii. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) ix. The Stones of Venice I(1851) x. The Stones of Venice II (1853) xi. The Stones of Venice III (1853) xii. Lectures on Architecture and Painting (Edinburgh lectures) (1854) xiii. The Harbours of England (1856), Turner Catalogues and Notes xiv. Academy Notes (1855–9, 1875), Notes on Prout and Hunt (1879–80) xv. The Elements of Drawing (1857), The Elements of Perspective (1859), The Laws of Fésole (1877–8) xvi. A Joy for Ever (1857), The Two Paths (1859), xvii. Unto This Last (1860), Munera Pulveris (1862–3), Time and Tide (1867) xviii. Sesame and Lilies (1865), The Ethics of the Dust (1866), The Crown of Wild Olive (1866) xix. The Cestus of Aglaia (1865–6), The Queen of the Air (1869) xx. Lectures on Art (1870), Aratra Pentelici (1870) xxi. Material relating to the Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford

note on the principal contents of the library edition

xxii. Lectures on Landscape (1871), Michael Angelo and Tintoret (1871), The Eagle’s Nest (1872), Ariadne Florentina (1872) xxiii. Val d’Arno (1873), The Aesthetic and Mathematical Schools of Florence (1874), Mornings in Florence (1875–7), The Shepherd’s Tower (1881) xxiv. Giotto and his Works in Padua (1853–60), The Cavalli Monuments at Verona (1872), Guide to the Academy at Venice (1877), St Mark’s Rest (1877–84) xxv. Love’s Meinie (1873–81), Proserpina (1875–86) xxvi. Deucalion (1875–83) xxvii. Fors Clavigera (1871–3) xxviii. Fors Clavigera (1874–6) xxix. Fors Clavigera (1877–84) xxx. Material relating to the Guild and Museum of St George xxxi. Bibliotheca Pastorum: The Economist of Xenophon (1876), Rock Honeycomb (1877), The Elements of Prosody (1880), A Knight’s Faith (1885) xxxii. Studies in Peasant Life: The Story of Ida (1883), Roadside Songs of Tuscany (1885), Christ’s Folk in the Apennine (1887), Ulric the Farm Servant (1886–8) xxxiii. ‘Our Fathers Have Told Us’: The Bible of Amiens (1880–85), Valle Crucis, The Art of England (1883), The Pleasures of England (1884) xxxiv. The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884) xxxv. Praeterita (1885–9), Dilecta (1886–1900) xxxvi. Letters I xxxvii. Letters II xxxviii. Bibliography, Catalogue of Ruskin’s Drawings xxxix. Index

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CHRONOLOGY

8 February 1819 John Ruskin, an only child, born to John James and Margaret Ruskin in 54 Hunter Street, London (now demolished). Brought up an Evangelical Protestant; often visits Scotland to see relatives. 1823 Family move to Herne Hill, Camberwell: Ruskin always remembers the garden (house now demolished). Ruskin taught by his mother; at some point early in his child- hood, he begins to read through the Bible from cover to cover with her; early signs of exceptional memory. 1824–6 Ruskin travels with his father around Great Britain collecting orders for sherry: he sees many historical monuments and buildings. 1830 First poem published (‘On Skiddaw and Derwent Water’). Tutored in Greek and mathematics but is otherwise educated by his parents. 1832 Presented as a birthday present with a copy of Samuel Rogers’ Italy with engravings after, among others, Turner. 1833 First long family tour of the continent. Ruskin sees the Alps. Meets Adèle Domecq, with whom he falls in love. 1834 Taught at the Evangelical Thomas Dale’s school. Publishes his ﬁrst prose (‘Enquiries on the Causes of the Colour of the Water of the Rhine’). 1835 First sees Venice. 1836 Writes a defence of Turner, not printed till 1903. 1837 Enters Christ Church, Oxford, as a gentleman com- moner. Publishes The Poetry of Architecture.

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chronology

1838 Tries unsuccessfully for the Newdigate Prize for Poetry at Oxford; visits Scotland and the Lake District. 1839 Wins the Newdigate for ‘Salsette and Elephanta’ and meets Wordsworth. Purchases Turner’s Richmond, Surrey, the first of what will become Ruskin’s significant Turner collection. 1840 Embarks on long continental tour that lays the ground for Modern Painters I. 1841 Treated for depression at Leamington Spa; writes The King of the Golden River for Effie Gray. Is taught painting by J. D. Harding. 1842 Graduates from Oxford with an honorary double fourth; father takes a lease on the grand 163 Denmark Hill (now demolished). 1843 Writes and publishes Modern Painters I. Writes more poetry. Parents continue to hope that he will take holy orders and succeed as a poet. 1844 Visits Switzerland and France, particularly the Alps. 1845 Undertakes crucial visit to France, Switzerland, and Italy, this time without his parents: extends knowledge of pre-Renaissance Italian art. 1846 Publishes Modern Painters II. Repeats much of 1845 tour with his parents. 1847 Receives more treatment in Leamington Spa. Relationship with Effie Gray becoming closer. 1848 Marries Effieon10 April. The official story will later be that the marriage was not consummated because of impotence but the truth remains unclear (and the impotence story was almost certainly a convenience to permit an annulment). From August, the family visits Normandy. 1849 Publishes The Seven Lamps of Architecture, his first significant book on buildings. Stays the winter in Venice, working on what will become The Stones of Venice. 1850 Publishes his Poems. 1851 Issues the first volume of the firmly Protestant The Stones, together with the expensive Examples of the

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chronology

Architecture of Venice and Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds, a Protestant account of the duties of clergy. Turner dies: in Ruskin’s view, the greatest landscape painter of all time. 1852 Effie and Ruskin move to 30 Herne Hill; another long period of study in Venice. 1853 Publishes Stones of Venice II and III and takes a holiday in Glenfinlas with Millais. Ruskin gives a sequence of lectures in Edinburgh on art published the following year. Marriage falling apart. 1854 Marriage annulled; travels throughout France, Switzerland, and Italy; beings teaching drawing at the Working Men’s College. 1856 Publishes Modern Painters III and IV and begins activity in support of the new Oxford Museum. In November, he meets Charles Eliot Norton, who will become an important if obtuse friend. 1857 Begins the exhausting labour of arranging the Turner Bequest (‘upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper’). Delivers The Political Economy of Art (later called A Joy for Ever). 1858 Inaugural address at the Cambridge School of Art. Finally ‘unconverted’ from Evangelicalism and enters a long and difficult period of theological thinking. Meets Rose La Touche (1848–75), an Evangelical Christian with whom he eventually falls in love. She will never be recon- ciledtoRuskin’s religious unorthodoxy. 1859 Publishes The Two Paths. Visits Yorkshire, and later Germany and Switzerland. Visits Winnington School (Cheshire), whose liberal programme of education attracts the post-Evangelical Ruskin. 1860 Ruskin completes Modern Painters and publishes the four essays of Unto This Last, which he will later regard as his most important work. 1861 Year dominated by depression; love for Rose deepens. 1862 In April, Ruskin and Rose are forbidden contact and do not meet again till 1866. Ruskin’s father is gravely ill. Publishes Munera Pulveris.

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chronology

1863 Buys land in Chamonix, planning to leave England. Spends time at Winnington, gaining ideas about education, physical exercise, and religion. 1864 Ruskin’s father dies, leaving his son a fortune. Gives the lectures that become Sesame and Lilies, with Rose on his mind in ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’. Joan Severn (Joanie) comes to Denmark Hill to care for Ruskin’s mother and will subsequently care for Ruskin himself at Brantwood until his death. 1865 The Governor Eyre controversy. The Ethics of the Dust, arising from his teaching at Winnington, is published (with ‘1866’ on the title page). 1866 Publishes The Crown of Wild Olive; travels in France and Switzerland; proposes marriage to Rose in February. Periodic states of despair. 1867 Publishes Time and Tide; continuing state of emotional torment; deep uncertainties about Christianity continue. 1868 Mrs La Touche contacts Effie (now married to Millais) who denounces Ruskin. Lectures in Dublin. In France at the end of the year. 1869 Sustained interest in ancient Greek religion. Publishes The Queen of the Air. Ruskin elected first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, his first (and only) official position. 1870 Inaugural lectures; founds drawing school at Oxford (still there). 1871 Disillusionment with Oxford undergraduates; tries to reach a new audience with Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (till 1884). Death of his mother. Buys Brantwood on Coniston Water. Begins to organise what will become the Guild of St George. In October, paints (watercolour and body- colour over graphite on wove paper) Kingfisher (cover image). 1872 Rose rejects another marriage proposal. Publishes The Eagle’s Nest. Lectures at Oxford. 1873 Begins a sequence of science books searching out the mythic meanings of birds, plants, and stones.

chronology

1874 Publishes Val d’Arno. In Italy; important experiences of spiritual renewal in Assisi. Declines gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. 1875 Death of Rose La Touche (possibly from a form of anorexia nervosa). Ruskin gives a substantial art collection to Oxford. Founds St George’s Museum at Walkley, Shefﬁeld. 1876 Travels in Switzerland: crucial period of spiritual revival in Venice at Christmas. Continues investigation of spiritualism. 1877 Dark, characterful drawings of Venice; publishes Guide to the Academy at Venice; begins St Mark’s Rest. 1878 First serious mental breakdown; Whistler v. Ruskin libel trial; organises Turner exhibition. Resigns chair at Oxford. 1879 Reads Plato; suffers serious depression. 1880 Returns to writing, including his only literary criticism, Fiction, Fair and Foul (to 1881); publishes Arrows of the Chace; begins The Bible of Amiens; travels in France. 1881 Suffers second episode of grave madness. Disturbed by the death of Carlyle; undertakes some writing, including The Bible of Amiens. 1882 Suffers devastating attack of mental illness in the spring. Recovering in France at the end of the year. 1883 Resumes Slade Professorship but his lectures are eccentric and his frustration grows. Publishes The Art of England. Increasingly bothered by the associations between his state of mind and the weather. 1884 Publishes The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century. 1885 Resigns the Professorship, appalled by vivisection in his own Oxford Museum. Begins Praeterita, issued, like many of his works, in parts. Publishes On the Old Road. 1886 Suffers from further spell of madness. 1887 Publishes Hortus Inclusus; banished to Folkestone and Sandgate and does not think he will see Brantwood again; meets Kathleen Olander in London.

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chronology

1888 Leaves Sandgate for France, Switzerland, and Italy. Proposes to Kathleen Olander. Breaks down in Venice. 1889 Writes last portions of Praeterita. Mental breakdown ends public career. 1900 Dies on 20 January. Buried in the graveyard of St Andrew’s Church Coniston below a cross designed by W. G. Collingwood and carved from green slate from the local Tilberthwaite quarry.

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ABBREVIATIONS

All references to Ruskin’s works, unless stated otherwise, are to The Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: Allen, 1903–12) and are cited simply as volume and page number. Note that the Library Edition is available in complete paperback facsimile from Cambridge University Press’s Cambridge Library Collection and in open access pdf form from Lancaster University’s Ruskin Library and Research Centre (www.lancaster.ac.uk /users/ruskinlib/Pages/Works.html).

In-text abbreviations Bradley Letters from Venice, 1851–1852, ed. J. L. Bradley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955) Brantwood Diary The Brantwood Diary of John Ruskin: Together with Selected Related Letters and Sketches of Persons Mentioned, ed. Helen Gill Viljoen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971) Cate The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, ed. George Allan Cate (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982) Diaries The Diaries of John Ruskin, ed. Joan Evans and J. H. Whitehouse, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956–9) [paginated continuously] Family Letters The Ruskin Family Letters: The Correspondence of John James Ruskin, his Wife, and their Son, John, 1801–1843, ed. Van Akin Burd, 2 vols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973) Hayman John Ruskin: Letters from the Continent, 1858, ed. John Hayman (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982)

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list of abbreviations

Hilton 1 Tim Hilton, John Ruskin: The Early 1819–1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) Hilton 2 Tim Hilton, John Ruskin: The Later Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) Hilton 3 Tim Hilton, John Ruskin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) (a single volume that comprises both Hilton 1 and Hilton 2) La Touche John Ruskin and Rose La Touche: Her Unpublished Diaries of 1861 and 1867, ed. Van Akin Burd (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980) Library James S. Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 2012) Norton The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton, ed. John Lewis Bradley and Ian Ousby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Reﬂections Reﬂections of a Friendship: John Ruskin’s Letters to Pauline Trevelyan 1848-1866, ed. Virginia Surtees (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979) Shapiro Ruskin in Italy: Letters to his Parents 1845, ed. Harold I. Shapiro (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) Winnington The Winnington Letters: John Ruskin’s Correspondence with Margaret Alexis Bell and the Children at Winnington Hall, ed. Van Akin Burd (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969)

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