Ruskin Today

Ruskin in his youth saw things with a clarity of perception which was almost unprecedented. In addition he was a poet: he had the gift of transmitting what he saw - in art, architecture, society, and nature - with a spontaneous eloquence which enslaved, alike, writers from Wordsworth to Proust and reformers from Tolstoy to Bernard Shaw. Today Ruskin is practically unknown. His tendency to preach, his bouts of mental chaos, and the very fluency of his rhetoric have killed his appeal. Few writers have ever suffered such a reversal. Sir Kenneth Clark's new anthology of 'the best of Ruskin', by modern standards, is perfectly designed to reintroduce this fascinating and complex figure. Extracts from his writings are grouped by subjects with separate introductions, and Ruskin's own shrewd comments on himself are preceded by a note on his life and the pathetic story of his infantile relations with women. --- from book's back cover