Ruskin and the Dawn of the Modern

A reconsideration of John Ruskin's legacy, suggesting that his late work played an important role in shaping the 20th-century mind. It focuses on such diverse areas as his thinking on music, his impact on social reform policies and his influence on the cultural debates of the late Victorian era.

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This interdisciplinary collection of original essays reconsiders John Ruskin's legacy, suggesting that the vigour and vitality of his late work played an important role in shaping the twentieth-century mind. The contributors have focused on such diverse areas as Ruskin's thinking on music, his impact on social reform policies and the British Labour movement, his influence on scientific and artistic education, the complexities of his relationship with aestheticism, and on his writing in Fors Clavigera. Together, the essays expose the extraordinarily pervasive influence that Ruskin's work had on central cultural debates of the late Victorian era. Moreover, they overturn received assumptions about Ruskin's significance in the dawning of the modern sensibility.