Ruskin's culture wars
Subtitle: Fors clavigera and the crisis of Victorian liberalism
By: Judith Stoddart.
Series: Victorian literature and culture series
Publisher: University Press of Virginia
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 193
Subjects: Ruskin, John, 1819-1900.; Ruskin, John, 1819-1900 -- Political and social views.; Labor movement -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Liberalism -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century.
Description: In Ruskin's Culture Wars, Judith Stoddart provides the first sustained modern critical reading of Fors Clavigera, placing this classic work in the context of its Victorian contemporaries: art journals, liberal and working-class periodicals, and popular criticism. In recreating the intellectual climate, she demonstrates the sense of cultural crisis and change evident at the time.

Rebelling against the tendency to treat Ruskin's letters as the prose lyric of a damaged psyche, Stoddart shows how the cumulative text of Fors Clavigera not only records but revises and redirects the preoccupations of his period. He was an integral part of Victorian discussions of literary tradition and of the roles of democracy and nationality in late-nineteenth-century Europe.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [177]-185) and index.