Definitive, concise, and very interesting... From William Shakespeare to Winston Churchill, the Very Interesting People series provides authoritative bite-sized biographies of Britain's most fascinating historical figures - people whose influence and importance have stood the test of time. Each book in the series is based upon the biographical entry from the world-famous Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. -

Louisa Waterford (1818-91), modest, retiring, of good family, renowned for her beauty, and with extraordinary grace, was the embodiment of a Victorian ideal of womanhood. But like the age itself, her life was filled with contrasts and paradoxes. She had been born with artistic gifts, and became a satellite of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, though she had no formal training. Then, at the height of John Ruskin's intellectual power and success as a critic, she asked him to accept her as an art student, and he accepted. Their correspondence- often harshly critical, never, as Waterford put it, falsely praising - lies at the heart of this book. These are letters which open a spectrum of discussion on the cultural, gender and social issues of the period. Both Waterford and Ruskin engaged in tireless philanthropic work for diverse causes, crossing social boundaries with subtle determination, and both responded to a sense of duty as well as an artistic vocation. But, as Ings-Chambers shows, their correspondence was more than a dialogue about society: it helped to make Waterford the artist she became.

A biography of Wilde’s most turbulent years, including the full story of the summer Oscar Wilde spent writing his masterpiece, when he was at the height of his fame, when his relationships were at their most tangled, and right before his life fell apart.

John Ruskin was one of the greatest Victorian critics of art and society, but he was also preoccupied with politics, economics and education. This pocket-sized biography explores his influence on his own age and ours, examining his work, his relationships and his creative life.

Ruskin's letters to Norton reflect and express, often more vividly than his own public prose, the spiritual, amatory, artistic, and cultural preoccupations of Ruskin's life. This 1987 volume presents a complete and accurate record of the exchanges, which comprise 333 from Ruskin to Norton and 63 in return.

"The great Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin spans 39 volumes and, over the course of the century, further compilations of his private diaries and letters have appeared: but the most important epistolary relationship of his later years, shared with his Scottish cousin Joan (Agnew Ruskin) Severn, has until now been entirely unpublished. These letters - more than 3,000 of them - have been challenging for Ruskin scholars to draw upon, with their baby-talk, apparent nonsense and unelaborated personal references. Yet they contain important statements of Ruskins opinions on travel, on fashion, on the ideal arts and crafts home, on effective education and other questions: and Ruskin often used his letters to Severn as a substitute for his personal diary. In this important new edition, Dickinson presents an edited, annotated selection of a correspondence which, until now, has been almost inaccessible to scholars of Ruskin and of the Victorian period."

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

John Ruskin (1819–1900) was the most prominent art and architecture critic of his time. Yet his reputation has been overshadowed by his personal life, especially his failed marriage to Effie Gray, which has cast him in the history books as little more than a Victorian prude. In this book, Andrew Ballantyne rescues Ruskin from the dustbin of history’s trifles to reveal a deeply attuned thinker, one whose copious writings had tremendous influence on all classes of society, from roadmenders to royalty. Ballantyne examines a crucial aspect of Ruskin’s thinking: the notion that art and architecture have moral value. Telling the story of Ruskin’s childhood and enduring devotion to his parents—who fostered his career as a writer on art and architecture—he explores the circumstances that led to Ruskin’s greatest works, such as Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Stones of Venice, and Unto This Last. He follows Ruskin through his altruistic ventures with the urban poor, to whom he taught drawing, motivated by a profound conviction that art held the key to living a worthwhile life. Ultimately, Ballantyne weaves Ruskin’s story into a larger one about Victorian society, a time when the first great industrial cities took shape and when art could finally reach beyond the wealthy elite and touch the lives of everyday people.

This important work in Ruskin studies provides for the first time an authoritative study of Ruskin’s Guild of St George. It introduces new material that is important in its own right as a significant piece of social history, and as a means to re-examine Ruskin’s Guild idea of self-sufficient, co-operative agrarian communities founded on principles of artisanal (non-mechanised) labour, creativity and environmental sustainability. The remarkable story of William Graham and other Companions lost to Guild history provides a means to fundamentally transform our understanding of Ruskin’s utopianism.