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Sesame and Lillies: Three Lectures
As a vocal critic of art on the whole, British writer JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900) was a profoundly influential voice upon European painting, architecture, aesthetics of the 19th and 20th centuries. This 1865 collection of three lectures-"Of Kings' Treasures," "Of Queens' Gardens," and "Of the Mysteries of Life"-offers an intimate look at his thoughts on culture and humanity's nurturing of its own education. He discusses: . the importance of "valuable books" . the nature of "a civilized country" . the necessity of educating women . advice for living a plain but noble life . and more. Students of art history will in particular find this an enlightening read.
192 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2006
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About the author
John Ruskin
3,754 books467 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 26, 2014
John Ruskin helped form my view of book collecting. Per his advice, I built a sufficient library where each book has earned its rightful place, regardless of birth. For it was Ruskin who suggested to obtain...a serviceable and steadily increasing series of books through life; every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in its niche.
Modern readers who happen upon this collection of Ruskin's lectures on Man, Woman, Books, Work, and Nature, seem to focus on their current feelings and political environment. Balderdash. Accept his ruminations as a product of his time, just as our mush will be thus reviewed in the next decades.
Let heartsickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life forever.
His sentences have been described as spears or daggers, as they hit the main point and then move on. These lectures, first delivered in the 1860s, hit upon social philosophy, which veers between the age-old thorn of employer/employee,
And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, - Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?
to Man's debt to Woman:
...no man has ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion.
Like Hemingway's lions lolling on the shore, my Ruskin is king over his printed dominion, now happily retired to the highest shelf, reserved for the Printed Elders of 100+ years. Self-help never looked so good.
Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature.
Book Season = Spring (vanity not excited)
Modern readers who happen upon this collection of Ruskin's lectures on Man, Woman, Books, Work, and Nature, seem to focus on their current feelings and political environment. Balderdash. Accept his ruminations as a product of his time, just as our mush will be thus reviewed in the next decades.
Let heartsickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life forever.
His sentences have been described as spears or daggers, as they hit the main point and then move on. These lectures, first delivered in the 1860s, hit upon social philosophy, which veers between the age-old thorn of employer/employee,
And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, - Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?
to Man's debt to Woman:
...no man has ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion.
Like Hemingway's lions lolling on the shore, my Ruskin is king over his printed dominion, now happily retired to the highest shelf, reserved for the Printed Elders of 100+ years. Self-help never looked so good.
Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature.
Book Season = Spring (vanity not excited)
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August 13, 2021Still surprised the original HH made it into our 1909-1911 College Entrance Requirements.
May 26, 2013
Ruskin was celebrated by his Victorian contemporaries as a brilliant cultural theorist whose commentaries on art and culture guided the taste of age. Rightly denounced by Karen Millet and the first wave of feminist scholars for his patriarchal sexual politics, Ruskin's other cultural messages about education, morality and humanity, were inevitably overlooked. Embedded in Sesame and Lilies is, of course, the paradigm of Victorian sexual ideology - the separate spheres' debate, the paradox of perfect womanhood which novelists from Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Collins, Meredith, James, Praed and others, would interweave in narrative landscapes. Yet Ruskin equally recognizes the power of education to ameliorate human weakness, the need for compassion and tolerance, the importance of fidelity and trust. He was 'surprised at no depths, to which, when warped from its honour, humanity can be degraded' (Sesame and Lilies 92). It is time, I think, for Ruskin to be re-read, if only to re-engage with the humanism so tragically lost in these brutal times of global violence.
July 30, 2018
Ruskin definitely has some hard-hitting things to say about literature, reading, and making good use of one's time. However, I'm really thrown off by his views about women, which seem to be very contradictory. In the first part of the 'Lilies' lecture, he says that women are obviously equal to men, and that then should be educated in the same manner and 'turned loose in a library' instead of being raised up to be 'accomplished' and ornamental, without any real knowledge at all,which was the standard at the time. Then, just a few pages later, he says that women should avoid reading theology because it will, apparently, be too confusing for their weaker intellect! Oh, and there's also that lovely comment about imagination being a very rare, weak, and useless quality in women. I really don't know what to think about this book.
May 13, 2020
There were a lot of beautifully written insightful thoughts in these lectures. They also serve as an interesting window into part of the past. I particularly enjoyed passages where he bemoaned capitalism, and chastised men for only caring about their horses. I felt he was limited by his binary thinking about the sexes, but I imagine much of what he thought and wrote was progressive for its time.
The final lecture is perhaps the best. His anguishes that taught him of failure became my anguishes. His ability to look at a pile of perceived failures and find purpose in them, in their inadequateness, is a pretty inspiring message to walk away with.
The final lecture is perhaps the best. His anguishes that taught him of failure became my anguishes. His ability to look at a pile of perceived failures and find purpose in them, in their inadequateness, is a pretty inspiring message to walk away with.
March 7, 2025
I particularly enjoyed the first lecture discussing good literature shaping ourselves.
March 6, 2021
Ruskin’s first lecture persuades his audience to avoid trashy novels and other bad literature, and to build a library of good books, both in terms of binding and in terms of content.
His second and third intend to awaken “the youth of England ... to take some thought of the purposes of life into which they are entering, and the nature of the world they have to conquer.”
Ruskin’s style is obviously antiquated, and so are some of his views (e.g., on gender roles), but he comes across as an idealist whose knowledge of the arts is vast and whose passion is genuine.
Some of his exhortations and admonitions could still be relevant today, as when he criticises a contemporary and collective ‘despising’ of literature, science, art, nature and compassion:
“Our National wish and purpose are only to be amused; our National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truth (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word *Dis*-Ease, the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and its Amusements!”
His second and third intend to awaken “the youth of England ... to take some thought of the purposes of life into which they are entering, and the nature of the world they have to conquer.”
Ruskin’s style is obviously antiquated, and so are some of his views (e.g., on gender roles), but he comes across as an idealist whose knowledge of the arts is vast and whose passion is genuine.
Some of his exhortations and admonitions could still be relevant today, as when he criticises a contemporary and collective ‘despising’ of literature, science, art, nature and compassion:
“Our National wish and purpose are only to be amused; our National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truth (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word *Dis*-Ease, the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and its Amusements!”
April 7, 2011
These fascinating essays are about reading, books, educations, and what makes a person noble.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews