Praeterita

by John Ruskin, Francis O'Gorman (Editor)

Overview

'For as I look deeper into the mirror, I find myself a more curious person than I had thought.' John Ruskin (1819-1900) was a towering figure of the nineteenth century: an art critic who spoke up for J. M. W. Turner and for the art of the Italian Middle Ages; a social critic whose aspiration for, and disappointment in, the future of Great Britain was expressed in some of the most vibrant prose in the language. Ruskin's incomplete autobiography was written between periods of serious mental illness at the end of his career, and is an eloquent analysis of the guiding powers of his life, both public and private. An elegy for lost places and people, Praeterita recounts Ruskin's intense childhood, his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, and, most of all, his journeys across France, the Alps, and northern Italy. Attentive to the human or divine meaning of everything around him, Praeterita is an astonishing account of revelation. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191627361
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	05/10/2012
Series:	Oxford World's Classics Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	19 MB
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About the Author

Francis O'Gorman has published widely on Ruskin, including Ruskin and Gender, co-ed. Dinah Birch (Palgrave, 2002). He has edited and contributed to Blackwell's Critical Guide to the Victorian Novel (2002) and the Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel (Blackwell, 2004). He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. THE work to which, as partly above described, I set myself during the year 1834 under the excitement remaining from my foreign travels, was in four distinct directions, in any one of which my strength might at that time have been fixed by definite encouragement. There was first the effort to express sentiment in rhyme ; the sentiment being really genuine, under all the superficial vanities of its display; and the rhymes rhythmic, only without any ideas in them. It was impossible to explain, either to myself or other people, why I liked staring at the sea, or scampering on a moor; but, one had pleasure in making some sort of melodious noise about it, like the wavesthemselves, or the peewits. Then, secondly, there was the real loveof engraving, and of such characters of surface and shade as it could give. I have never seen drawing, by a youth, so entirely industrious in delicate line; and there was really the making of a fine landscape, or figure outline, engraver in me. But fate having ordered otherwise, I mourn the loss to engraving less than that before calculated, or rather incalculable, one, to geology! Then there was, thirdly, the violent instinct for architecture; but I never could have built or carved anything, because I was without power of design; and have perhaps done as much in that direction as it was worth doing with so limited faculty. And then, fourthly, there was the unabated, never to be abated, geological instinct, now fastened on the Alps. My fifteenth birthday gift being left to my choice, I asked for Saussure's 'Voyages dans les Alpes,' and thenceforward began progressive work, carryingon my mineralogical dictionary by the help ofJameson's three-volume Mineralogy, (an entirely clear and serviceable book;) comparing his descri...