Books by John Ruskin
On Art and Life (Penguin Great Ideas)
by John Ruskin
Two of Ruskin's famous essays: "The Nature of the Gothic" and "The Work of Iron" from his book The Stones of Venice.
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Unto This Last and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)
by John Ruskin
The most influential art theorist and critic of his age, an outstanding man of letters, a sensitive painter and draughtsman, Ruskin's social criticism shocked and angered the establishment and many of his admirers.
First and foremost an outcry against injustice and inhumanity, Unto this Last is also a closely argued assault on the science of political economy, which dominated the Victorian period. Ruskin was a profoundly conservative man who looked back to the Middle Ages as a Utopia, yet his ideas had a considerable influence on the British socialist movement. And in making his powerful moral and aesthetic case against the dangers of unhindered industrialization he was strangely prophetic. This volume shows the astounding range and depth of Ruskin's work, and in an illuminating introduction the editor reveals the consistency of Ruskin's philosophy and his adamant belief that questions of economics, art and science could not be separated from questions of morality. In Ruskin's words, 'There is no Wealth but Life.'
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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$16.00
The Elements of Drawing
by John Ruskin
Ruskin's The Elements of Drawing, first published in 1857, remains one of the most sensible and useful books on how to draw and paint, both for the amateur and the professional artist. Ruskin reduces the art of drawing to its simplest elements - the making of marks, the perception of shapes and silhouettes before going on to more complex exercises and the use of colour. He emphasizes the importance of observation of natural forms, and of graduated study; and much of his method has strong links with recent methods of teaching.
John Dunstan, well known internationally both as a painter and an experienced author of practical books on painting has provided an introduction, commentary on the text and drawings and colour exercises to illustrate more fully Ruskin's method and instruction. Where Ruskin refers to the work of other artists such as Dürer, Titian and Turner, a reproduction of the work, or a drawing after the origianl, has been included.
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$26.95
Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts, Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life
by John Ruskin
As a memoir elevated to the level of fine art, John Ruskin’s Praeterita stands alongside The Education of Henry Adams and the confessions of Augustine, Rousseau, and Tolstoy. A luminous account of his childhood and youth, Praeterita is the last major work of the revolutionary nineteenth-century critic.
Written in the lucid intervals between the bouts of dementia that haunted his final years, Praeterita tells the story of Ruskin’s early life—the formation of his taste and intellect through education, travels in Europe, and encounters with great works of art and artists. In abandoning the traditional linear mode of autobiography, Ruskin opened up the form and was an important influence on Proust. He also provided a vivid, detailed portrait of pre-Victorian and Victorian England that is as indispensable an account of its era as Samuel Pepys’s diary is of England in the seventeenth century.
This edition of Praeterita is accompanied by Dilecta, Ruskin’s own selection from his letters, diaries, and other writings. In these more private writings we get a fascinating glimpse of genius as it flickers in and out of madness. Together these two works illuminate the life and mind of a towering intellect who left an extraordinary mark on the history of aesthetics and culture, and on the very course of autobiography. With a new Introduction by Tim Hilton
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
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Giotto and His Works in Padua (ekphrasis)
by John Ruskin
The Arena Chapel in Padua was completed in 1303; Giotto, then considered the preeminent painter in Italy, was commissioned to paint it in 1306. The resulting fresco cycle, detailing the history, birth, life, and death of Christ, ranks among the greatest artworks ever created.
John Ruskin helped redefine art criticism in the nineteenth century through his attention to detail, his playful and engaging prose, and the conviction with which he discussed the subjects that mattered most to him. Ruskin’s ekphrastic writing became a way for readers to approach the experience of looking at great art without actually seeing it in person. Despite having written about Giotto on numerous occasions in Stones of Venice and Modern Painters, he never treated the Arena Chapel in its own right. Here Ruskin examines the panels and brings them life, describing their many hidden details, all the result of Giotto’s unrivaled genius. As Ruskin says, “Giotto was…one of the greatest men who ever lived.”
Long out of print, the Arundel Society first published Giotto and His Works in Padua between 1853 and 1860. It stands as Ruskin’s most compelling set of reflections on Giotto’s masterpiece—an artwork that, in Ruskin’s estimation, changed the very course of art history. Originally accompanied by a set of black and white woodcuts of the panels in the Chapel, this new edition presents each panel in vivid color photography, adding a useful visual aid to Ruskin’s lyrical descriptions. The result is a book that serves not only as an introduction for students of art history, but also as a discussion of what it means to be a great artist, by one of most influential writers ever to tackle visual art.
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The King of the Golden River
by John Ruskin
A classic nineteenth-century fairy tale of adventure, magic, and good deeds, with an ironic sense of humor, brought back to life with illustrations by Quentin Blake.
The King of the Golden River tells the tale of the Black brothers: the kind-natured eleven- year-old Gluck and his two nasty older brothers, Hans and Schwartz. For Gluck, play is cleaning the floors, and his education consists of a wholesome quantity of punches. One stormy evening, Gluck is left at home to prepare his older brothers’ dinner when an extraordinary-looking little man knocks at the door. Having been warned not to let anyone in, Gluck watches as the little old man stands drenched and shivering at the door. His soft heart tells him to ignore his brothers’ advice, and so Gluck’s encounter with the mysterious King of the Golden River begins. Appearing at first as a beggar, then the Southwest Wind, and finally as a dwarf, the King of the Golden River issues Gluck a challenge: to climb to the source of the Golden River and throw into the stream three drops of holy water. If he can achieve this, the river will turn to gold.
Ruskin’s Victorian tale―first published in 1842―of good’s triumph over evil is a gripping adventure for all ages, and is brought vividly to life in new, never-before- seen illustrations by the celebrated Quentin Blake. 35 color illustrations
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Praeterita
by John Ruskin
'For as I look deeper into the mirror, I find myself a more curious person than I had thought.' John Ruskin (1819-1900) was a towering figure of the nineteenth century: an art critic who spoke up for J. M. W. Turner and for the art of the Italian Middle Ages; a social critic whose aspiration for, and disappointment in, the future of Great Britain was expressed in some of the most vibrant prose in the language. Ruskin's incomplete autobiography was written between periods of serious mental illness at the end of his career, and is an eloquent analysis of the guiding powers of his life, both public and private. An elegy for lost places and people, Praeterita recounts Ruskin's intense childhood, his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, and, most of all, his journeys across France, the Alps, and northern Italy. Attentive to the human or divine meaning of everything around him, Praeterita is an astonishing account of revelation. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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The Nature of Gothic. a Chapter from the Stones of Venice. Preface by William Morris
by John Ruskin
Ruskin's famous essay The Nature of Gothic first appeared as a chapter in his 1853 The Stones of Venice. It proved highly popular and took on a life of its own. Ruskin inspired Morris. This essay added fuel to another phase of the Gothic Revival in Britain. This facsimile reproduces Ruskin's essay together with a preface by Arts and Crafts designer William Morris, added to a reprint first published in 1889. Facsimile.
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Stones of Venice
by John Ruskin
"It is in Venice, and in Venice only, that effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance. Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere else." This was Ruskin's war cry as he entered the now almost forgotten Battle of the Styles on the side against "the school which has conducted men's inventive and constructional faculties from the Grand Canal to Gower Street."But first the reader must know the difference between right and wrong; he must find out for himself the best way of doing everything. "I shall give him stones, and bricks and straw, chisels and trowels and the ground, and then ask him to build, only helping him if I find him puzzled."Unhappily, both these exciting objectives were attained only after the expenditure of nearly half-a-million words; glorious words, but too many. For fifty years, The Stones of Venice was read by all who went there and thousands who could not; the sightseers whom the city captivates today seldom have its greatest guidebook with them.It is the aim of this new edition to put a fascinating book within reach of travelers--active or armchair--with limited resources of time. Much that was superfluous has been omitted; what remains is the essence of a now very readable and portable book. It is a book for the lover of architecture, the lover of Venice, the lover of lost causes, and, perhaps above all, for the lover of fine writing.
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Selected Writings
by John Ruskin
'To be taught to write or to speak - but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think - nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.' Ruskin was the most powerful and influential critic of the nineteenth century. He wrote about nature, art, architecture, politics, history, myth, and much besides; all his work is characterized by a clarity of vision as unsettling and intense now as it was for his first readers. This new selection draws on the whole range of his astonishingly varied output, from the passionate celebration of J. M. W. Turner's painting in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843) to Praeterita (1885-9), the elegiac autobiography of his later years. The introduction outlines Ruskin's life and thought, and shows why he remains such a rewarding writer today. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Sesame and Lilies
by John Ruskin, Deborah Epstein Nord
John Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, first published in 1865, stands as a classic nineteenth-century statement on the natures and duties of men and women. Although widely popular in its time, the work in its entirety has been out of print since the early twentieth century. This volume returns Sesame and Lilies toeasy availability and reunites the two halves of the work: Of Kings’ Treasuries, in which Ruskin critiques Victorian manhood, and Of Queens’ Gardens, in which he counsels women to take their places as the moral guides of men and urges the parents of girls to educate them to this end.
Feminist critics of the 1960s and 1970s regarded Of Queens’ Gardens asan exemplary expression of repressive Victorian ideas about femininity, and they paired it with John Stuart Mill’s more progressive Subjection of Women.This volume, by including the often ignored Of Kings’ Treasuries, offers readers full access to Ruskin’s complex and sometimes contradictory views on men and women. The accompanying essays place Sesame and Lilies withinhistorical debates on men, women, culture, and the family. Elizabeth Helsinger examines the text as a meditation on the pleasures of reading, Seth Koven gives a wide-ranging account of how Victorians read Sesame and Lilies, and Jan Marsh situates the work within controversies over educational reform.
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The Elements of Drawing (Dover Art Instruction)
by John Ruskin
Can drawing — sound, honest representation of the world as the eye sees it, not tricks with the pencil or a few "effects" — be learned from a book? One of the most gifted draftsmen, who is also one of the greatest art critics and theorists of all time, answers that question with a decided "Yes." He is John Ruskin, the author of this book, a classic in art education as well as a highly effective text for the student and amateur today.
The work is in three parts, cast in the form of letters to a student, successively covering "First Practice," "Sketching from Nature," and "Colour and Composition." Starting with the bare fundamentals (what kind of drawing pen to buy; shading a square evenly), and using the extremely practical method of exercises which the student performs from the very first, Ruskin instructs, advises, guides, counsels, and anticipates problems with sensitivity. The exercises become more difficult, developing greater and greater skills until Ruskin feels his reader is ready for watercolors and finally composition, which he treats in detail as to the laws of principality, repetition, continuity, curvature, radiation, contrast, interchange, consistency, and harmony. All along the way, Ruskin explains, in plain, clear language, the artistic and craftsmanlike reasons behind his practical advice — underlying which, of course, is Ruskin's brilliant philosophy of honest, naturally observed art which has so much affected our aesthetic.
Three full-page plates and 48 woodcuts and diagrams (the latter from drawings by the author) show the student what the text describes. An appendix devotes many pages to the art works which may be studied with profit.
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On Reading (On Series)
"To understand a profound thought is to have, at the moment one understands it, a profound thought oneself; and this demands some effort, a genuine descent to the heart of oneself . . . Only desire and love give us the strength to make this effort. The only books that we truly absorb are those we read with real appetite, after having worked hard to get them, so great had been our need of them."
Reading was, for Marcel Proust, more than the pursuit of knowledge: a truly spiritual activity, it was a means of transforming and transcending the self. By reading great authors, he contends, we not only learn of great ideas, but are enriched by the fruits of the world’s most inspirational minds.
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Ruskin on Art and Artists
by John Ruskin
With a profound passion for beauty, nature, and craftsmanship, 19th-century art critic and polymath John Ruskin was a visionary thinker and influential social commentator who revolutionized how society viewed art and its connection to life. This affordably priced anthology captures his timeless wisdom, which continues to influence 21st-century artists. It serves as a reminder of the deeper purpose of art beyond aesthetics, prioritizing authenticity—the essence of nature and reality. Ruskin's opposition to industrialization's dehumanizing effects is relevant today, as artists critique digital technology's impact on creativity. From his belief in art's educational, moral, and emotional impact to the artist's role, Ruskin's ideas inspire today's artists to maintain a balance between tradition and innovation, ensuring art remains personal and reflective of the world it inhabits.
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