“Then they will find my letters useful, and read them”: Persistent Ruskin

Abstract

Persistent Ruskin is the culmination of a three-year AHRC-funded research project, “John Ruskin, Cultural Travel, and Popular Access,” led by editors Keith Hanley and Brian Maidment, in partnership with John Walton and assisted by Rachel Dickinson. The collection reflects a growing effort by Ruskin scholars to demonstrate the vital and ongoing influence of his ideas, to map his lasting contribution to our understanding of modern civilization. The essays collected here explore the influence of Ruskin’s ideas upon such diverse fields as women’s education, theatre, museology, print culture, social and political movements, and aesthetics. As the editors themselves put it, the essays examine “the wide-ranging and abiding implications of Ruskin’s engagement with his contemporaries and followers into the present”.