Description
Book SynopsisAn art historian, cultural critic and political theorist, John Ruskin was, above all, a great educator. The inspiration behind William Morris, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust and Mahatma Gandhi, Ruskin’s influence can be felt increasingly in every sphere education today. John Ruskin and Nineteenth-Century Education brings together top international Ruskin scholars, exploring Ruskin’s many-faceted writings, pointing to some of the key educational issues raised by his work, and concluding with a powerful rereading of his ecological writing and apocalyptic vision of the earth’s future. In anticipation of the bicentennial of Ruskin’s birth in 2019, this volume makes a fresh and significant contribution to Victorian studies in the twenty-first century. It is dedicated to Dinah Birch, a much-loved Victorian specialist and authority on John Ruskin.
Trade Review"A valuable new vantage on Ruskin’s contributions to a trans-European conversation among writers, intellectuals, and educational professionals concerning educational philosophy, instruction, school organization, and the social benefits of educational improvements during the nineteenth century. — Sarah Winter, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Vol. 47, No. 1: Spring 2020"
As this volume shows, Ruskin’s view was that self-fulfilment for everyone was possible. The book also sets out Ruskin’s understanding that constraints of conventionality had to be broken fully to achieve the full self-fulfilment of all. — High Hobbs, The Companion, No. 19, 2020, accessed online at https://issuu.com/guildofstgeorge/docs/13_companion_for_pdf_12rd_june
Table of ContentsList of Figures; Foreword by Francis O’Gorman; Introduction, Valerie Purton; Section A. Changing the World; 1. ‘An Enormous Difference between Knowledge and Education’: What Ruskin Can Teach Us, Sara Atwood; 2. ‘Souls of Good Quality’: Ruskin, Tolstoy and Education, Stuart Eagles; 3. ‘To Teach Them How to Dress’: Ruskin, Clothing and Lessons in Society, Rachel Dickinson; 4. Mad Governess or Wise Counsellor? Sesame and Lilies Revisited, Jan Marsh; Section B. Libraries and the Arts; 5 ‘A Very Precious Book’: Ruskin’s Exegesis of the Psalms in Rock Honeycomb and Fors Clavigera, Emma Sdegno; 6. ‘Our Household Catalogue of Reference’: Ruskin’s Lesson Photographs of 1875–76, Stephen Wildman; 7. Ruskin, Music and the Health of the Nation, Paul Jackson; 8. Ruskin and the Fantastic, Edward James; Section C. Christianity and Apocalypse; 9. Ruskin’s ‘Many-Sided Soulfulness’, Keith Hanley; 10. ‘Catastrophe Will Come’: Ruskin, Nation and Apocalypse, Andrew Tate; Notes on Contributors; Index.