Beginning in 1859, the second volume of Tim Hilton's sterling biography of John Ruskin chronicles much suffering and sadness, as well as spiritual and artistic growth. The deaths of his beloved parents, in 1864 and 1871, snapped Ruskin out of self-indulgence and a tendency to complain. His love for Rose La Touche, only 9 years old when he met her in 1858 and appalled when he declared his feelings in 1866, would last throughout this morbidly pious girl's lingering illness and beyond her death in 1875. He had bouts of mental illness that finally incapacitated him in the decade before his death in 1900. Yet these were also the years in which Ruskin wrote his fascinating autobiography, Praeterita, and the innovative Fors Clavigera. Hilton believes this series of 96 pamphlets addressed to British workers to be Ruskin's masterpiece, a revelation of "the continuing life of the mind" as their author ranged from Dante to the English Poor Laws to the iconography of the penny. Hilton discusses these and the underlying themes of Ruskin's life with remarkable clarity and an impressive range of knowledge. He enables modern readers to decipher the idiosyncratic thoughts and feelings of a great Victorian who was "a glory of the nation's literature, and an important part of its social conscience." --Wendy Smith


From Library Journal
This new work by Hilton, a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, picks up in 1859 where his highly praised John Ruskin: The Early Years left off. At that time, Ruskin was finishing his five-volume Modern Painters, still recovering from a failed marriage, and starting to teach ten-year-old Rose La Touche. By his early 40s, Ruskin had earned a reputation as a writer and most notably a famed and feared art critic. But soon he became a strident activist for social reform whose essays, though stinging, petulant, and sarcastic, brought forth the ideas of national education, organized labor, old-age pensions, homes for the working classes, and organized street cleaners. When La Touche refused to marry him for religious reasons and soon died, there began a series of bouts with "brain fever" that eventually led to periods of seclusion and madness. Still, Ruskin was the first to head up a professorship of fine arts at Oxford. Hilton's research, years of reading Ruskin, and attention to detail make this biography very personal and readableDand probably the definitive account on Ruskin. A necessary companion to Susan P. Casteras and others' John Ruskin and the Victorian Eye (LJ 4/1/93), Hilton's two-volume set is recommended for English literature and art collections at academic and larger public libraries.DJoseph Hewgley, Nashville P.L. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Valentine Cunningham
...a captivating story of the great Victorian aesthete's slow drag into grand private despairs, ranting public dyspepsias and final madness.


Globe and Mail
"As stupendous in research and intelligence as volume one."


James Turner, Books & Culture
Far and away the best biography of Ruskin… [a] deeply felt and often superbly achieved work of the biographer's art.


Dave Hickey, Art Forum
"The model biography of a cultural figure. . . . a triumphant telling of one of the saddest stories ever told."


Book Description
Hilton's John Ruskin: the Early Years was published by YUP in 1985 and will be reissued in paperback this season. Following on from the first volume of his life of Ruskin, this second volume covers the years 1860 until his death in 1900. John Ruskin (1819-1900) is perhaps best known for his books on art criticism, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1853), but his contribution as an artist is significant as well. In fact, his landscapes and portraits, with their wildness and organic energy, echo many of his critical ideas. Ruskin disliked classicism's symmetry and order, preferring the rougher qualities of Gothic art. Likewise, he rejected machine-produced goods which he considered 'dishonest,' advocating craftsmanship. He came to be associated with the Arts & Crafts movement, along with William Morris. Ruskin founded a utopian arts and crafts community, putting his theory into practice.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Hilton's John Ruskin: the Early Years was published by YUP in 1985 and will be reissued in paperback this season. Following on from the first volume of his life of Ruskin, this second volume covers the years 1860 until his death in 1900. John Ruskin (1819-1900) is perhaps best known for his books on art criticism, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1853), but his contribution as an artist is significant as well. In fact, his landscapes and portraits, with their wildness and organic energy, echo many of his critical ideas. Ruskin disliked classicism's symmetry and order, preferring the rougher qualities of Gothic art. Likewise, he rejected machine-produced goods which he considered 'dishonest,' advocating craftsmanship. He came to be associated with the Arts & Crafts movement, along with William Morris. Ruskin founded a utopian arts and crafts community, putting his theory into practice.

FROM THE CRITICS

Hilton Kramer - Wall Street Journal

Taken together, these two volumes constitute the finest and fairest life of Ruskin that has yet been written. It is likely to remain the standard work for a long time to come....It has taken 100 years, but in Tim Hilton, Ruskin has at last found the champion his achievement deserves.

Publishers Weekly

The second volume of art historian and critic Hilton's biography of Ruskin is heftier in size than its predecessor, and a lesser achievement. It does, however, reveal fully the recurrent mental illness that crippled the controversial Victorian sage in his later years. Much of the book centers--as did much of the middle-aged, sexually na ve Ruskin's life--on his attenuated and abortive love affair with a young, fanatically religious girl, Rose La Touche, who died in her mid-20s (Ruskin met her when she was 10). Hilton also shows how sycophants exploited the wealthy Ruskin, who was increasingly unable to complete most of his later work, a failure that Hilton makes light of; he curiously contends that those works "may be better for their lack of termination." While Hilton is vastly knowledgeable about Ruskin, his garrulous, old-fashioned style ("Before returning to the events of Ruskin's life in 1871 it is convenient to summarise here "; "We must now describe the last months ") is at odds with his contemporary approach to insanity, as in his ruminations about La Touche's possible suicidal anorexia and Ruskin's manic depressive psychosis. In the face of such writing excesses, only Hilton's morbid fascination with Ruskin's descent into his long, precarious twilight will keep the reader turning the pages. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

This new work by Hilton, a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, picks up in 1859 where his highly praised John Ruskin: The Early Years left off. At that time, Ruskin was finishing his five-volume Modern Painters, still recovering from a failed marriage, and starting to teach ten-year-old Rose La Touche. By his early 40s, Ruskin had earned a reputation as a writer and most notably a famed and feared art critic. But soon he became a strident activist for social reform whose essays, though stinging, petulant, and sarcastic, brought forth the ideas of national education, organized labor, old-age pensions, homes for the working classes, and organized street cleaners. When La Touche refused to marry him for religious reasons and soon died, there began a series of bouts with "brain fever" that eventually led to periods of seclusion and madness. Still, Ruskin was the first to head up a professorship of fine arts at Oxford. Hilton's research, years of reading Ruskin, and attention to detail make this biography very personal and readable--and probably the definitive account on Ruskin. A necessary companion to Susan P. Casteras and others' John Ruskin and the Victorian Eye (LJ 4/1/93), Hilton's two-volume set is recommended for English literature and art collections at academic and larger public libraries.--Joseph Hewgley, Nashville P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Gross - The Sunday Telegraph

Now that it is complete, Hilton's book takes its place among the foremost modern literary biographies.

Carey - The Sunday Times

A masterpiece of investigative scholarship and a work of generous and engrossing humanity.Read all 9 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

The most readable and sympathetic [biography] that has yet appeared. — John Bayley