Examining the wide-ranging and abiding implications of Ruskin's engagement with his contemporaries and followers into the present, this collection is organized around three related themes. This book studies the dissemination of Ruskin's intellectual legacy to working men and women, especially through education, collections and museums.
Examining the wide-ranging implications of Ruskin's engagement with his contemporaries and followers, this collection is organized around three related themes: Ruskin's intellectual legacy and the extent to which its address to working men and women and children was realised in practice; Ruskin's followers and their sites of influence, especially those related to the formation of collections, museums, archives and galleries representing values and ideas associated with Ruskin; and the extent to which Ruskin's work constructed a world-wide network of followers, movements and social gestures that acknowledge his authority and influence. As the introduction shows, Ruskin's continuing digital presence is striking and makes a case for Ruskin's persistent presence. The collection begins with essays on Ruskin's intellectual presence in nineteenth-century thought, with some emphasis on his interest in the education of women. This section is followed by one on Ruskin's followers from the mid-nineteenth century into twentieth-century modernism that looks at a broad range of cultural activities that sought to further, repudiate, or exemplify Ruskin's work and teaching. Working-class education, the Ruskinian periodical, plays, and science fiction are all considered along with the Bloomsbury Group's engagement with Ruskin's thought and writing. Essays on Ruskin abroad-in America, Australia, and India round out the collection.
A Baker & Taylor Literary Essentials Title 'The up-to-date bibliography of works by many younger scholars tells readers Ruskin is not only persistent but resurgent. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' Choice 'This enterprising and authoritative collection of essays provides a stimulating overview of Ruskin's multiple legacies, challenging readers to think about his wide-ranging influence in fresh ways'. Dinah Birch, University of Liverpool, UK 'This book is an impressively wide-ranging and original collection of essays exploring many aspects of Ruskin's legacy. ... a richly varied and wide-ranging anthology...' The Companion: The Newsletter of the Guild of St George 'Readers of Nineteenth-Century Contexts will find in Persistent Ruskin an abundance of solidly interdisciplinary work ... It considers the breadth and complexity of his influence on widely different groups of his own contemporaries, and through them-as well as through direct continued reading of Ruskin himself-on subsequent generations all over the earth ... who have inherited and reacted to Ruskin's work.' Nineteenth-Century Contexts '...would make an excellent springboard for students interested in looking at Ruskin's works in a different way. It should be an essential addition to the library of any serious Ruskin scholar.' Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society
