This selection from the works of the writer and critic John Ruskin (1819 1900) is designed to illustrate the development of Ruskin's personality and literary style. What emerges is an extraordinary record of Ruskin's life and times, spanning most of the nineteenth century. Beginning with his reflections on his childhood, the volume proceeds chronologically, through his education and his European travels. It includes extracts from major essays on Venice, and observations on a range of contemporary writers, artists and architects, and it finishes with a moving passage on the sorrows of old age....