Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings

by John D. Rosenberg

No figure among the Victorians surpasses John Ruskin in magnitude of genius, modernity of message, or mastery of prose. Yet for the first half-century after his death in 1900, his genius lay largely undiscovered. First published in 1963, John D. Rosenberg's The Genius of John Ruskin aimed to make Ruskin's ideas and writings accessible to the modern reader, and it quickly became a classic. Long out of print, this important anthology is now available with a new foreword by Herbert F. Tucker and an expanded and updated bibliography by the author that takes into account recent Ruskin scholarship.

Genres: Nonfiction

560 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1979

Reviews

[Dennis Reed]

Ruskin's worldview is relentlessly ethical. It is bracing to read in an age when almost no one even thinks to ask if popular art and business can or should be "moral" (not just legal, but moral, harming none and benefiting each participant in the transaction). It's a reminder that the present is not the best of all possible worlds; only the most recent.