The influence of John Ruskin (1819–1900), both on his own time and on artistic and social developments in the twentieth century, cannot be over-stated. He changed Victorian perceptions of art, and was the main influence behind 'Gothic revival' architecture. As a social critic, he argued for the improvement of the condition of the poor, and against the increasing mechanisation of work in factories, which he believed was dull and soul-destroying. The thirty-nine volumes of the Library Edition of his works, published between 1903 and 1912, are themselves a remarkable achievement, in which his books and essays - almost all highly illustrated - are given a biographical and critical context in extended introductory essays and in the 'Minor Ruskiniana' - extracts from letters, articles and reminiscences both by and about Ruskin. This third volume contains Volume 1 of Modern Painters.

Excerpt from The Bible of Amiens; Valle Crucis; The Art of England; The Pleasures of EnglandRuskin was, as we have seen, very seriously ill in February 1878 with an attack Of brain-fever.l Early in April he was able to leave his bed, and by July he could report himself as having got into quiet work again, though conscious that he must not again risk the grief and passion Of writing on policy.2 The quiet work consisted largely Of studies Of rocks and owers, for during the latter months Of 1878 and in 1879 he issued two Parts Of Deucalion and one of Proserpina. In August he went with Mr. Arthur Severn to Malham, and presently he was well enough to pay some visits. In September he was in Scotland staying at Dunira with Mr. William Graham, and in October at Hawarden. His health was better, and Mr. Gladstone noted that there was no diminution Of the charm in an unrivalled guest.3 His visit to Dunira is recorded in two pleasant papers which Ruskin contributed at this time to The Nineteenth Cen tury, entitled The Three Colours of pre-raphaelitism. His doctors, as we have seen,4 forbade him to incur the excitement of giving evi dence in his own behalf in the action which Whistler had brought against him (november Early in the following year, he was troubled with other legal proceedings. His name had been forged on various cheques, and he was called to London as a witness for the prosecution. Being in very weak health, says the report Of the pro ceedings, Mr. Ruskin was allowed to give evidence from the bench.5 It was characteristic that when the prisoner had completed his sentence Ruskin gave him the means to start again in a better career.

To call Praeterita an autobiography is to tell only part of the truth. A book like no other, by oneof the greatest masters of English prose., it is less a narrative than the prismatic sotry of an extraordinary mind and a passionate heart told in terms of the author's aesthetic education. Ruskin was not merely the most important anglophone art critic and social commentator of the late nineteenth century: for his admirers - who included Proust - he was a Tolstoyan figure with the magic of an artist and the moral authority of a sage. Yet above all he was loved as a personality by friends and readers alilke, and it is the individual human qualitites which shine through the mercurial pages of Praeterita