Product Description

John Ruskin, one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the nineteenth century, was also one of the most prolific. Not only did he publish some 250 works, but he also wrote lectures, diaries, and thousands of letters that have not been published. This book the second and final volume of Tim Hilton's acclaimed biography of Ruskin, which is published on the centenary of Ruskin's death draws on the original source material to give a moving account of the life of this brilliant and creative man. The book begins in 1859. Ruskin had a disastrous marriage behind him, was living with his parents, travelling, and earning his keep by writing and tutoring. This brought him into contact with Rose La Touche, a girl of ten, with whom he slowly fell in love. Hilton recounts how this relationship developed into one of the saddest love affairs of literary hsitory, ending in tragedy in 1875. Thereafter, says Hilton, Ruskin's life was punctuated by bouts of insanity and despair that culminated in total breakdown for the last ten years of his life. During these years, however, his intellect and imagination reached new heights, as he produced Praeterita and most of Fors Clavigera, the series of monthly letters to British workers. Hilton's magisterial narrative follows Ruskin through this period and shows that he was the most eloquent and radical of all the great Victorian writers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64469 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fifteen years after the publication of Tim Hilton's now-standard biography of Ruskin's life from 1819-1859 (John Ruskin: the Early Years) comes the much fatter concluding volume; and it is just as accomplished and elegantly written. In the first volume Hilton expressed his view that after 1860 Ruskin was "a finer writer and a better man" and this book goes quite a long way towards convincing the reader of the value of that judgement. Hilton doesn't quite pull it off, though. Ultimately, it is hard to agree with the opinion that Fors Clavigera is "Ruskin's masterpiece". Hilton himself allows that "this preference is not easy to justify or explain" and that despite a life among bookish people "I have never met anyone in my life, apart from a few professional Ruskin scholars, who had read more than a dozen pages of Fors Clavigera".It is one of Hilton's projects in this biography to bring this series of 96 interrelated pamphlets out of obscurity. They have an obvious biographical usefuless; published from 1871 to 1878 they do illuminate the events of Ruskin's life during that busy decade. But Hilton doesn't convince that they have the literary power or impact of Modern Painters or The Stones of Venice.

The great personal story in this half of Ruskin's life is his passion for Rose La Touche, a girl he first met and fell in love with when she was 10 years old. He was close to her for years, proposing marriage as she reached 18, but her parents' opposition and her own intensely evangelical religious beliefs prevented the union. The love affair has a tragic drift, as Rose's mental instability and her savage mood-swings descended into madness and death at the age of 27. As with the story of Ruskin's doomed marriage from the first volume this is a tale that needs to be handled sensitively if it isn't to become merely lurid; and Hilton's sympathetic tact allied to a comprehensive approach does it justice. It is hard to imagine Ruskin's life being treated any better than this. --Adam Roberts

From the Publisher
Review
'intimate and magisterial...Hilton has worked with Ruskin since the early 1960's and no one has a deeper understanding of either him or his writing...[this book] ought to reshape Ruskin studies...Ruskin's real subject is himself. That, however, is the best reason for reading him today. He had an extraordinary mind, without rival in the diversity and richness of its learning, and the breadth of its generosity.' - Dinah Birch - London Review of Books

About the Author
Tim Hilton, a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and other journals, has written the catalogues of a number of significant exhibitions and has taught both painting and art history in several British art schools and universities.