Customer Reviews

The desire of my eyes: The life and work of John Ruskin

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Very extensive biography of a man who was a Man of his Time, the Victorian Era and who was both a "seer and a prophet". His ideas about the preservation of nature, economics and social reform still resonate today.

I got this book because I wanted an introduction to John Ruskin, who was a famous art critic and social critic in Victorian Britain, and this biography does an excellent job of narrating the major events of Ruskin's life, explaining Ruskin's major ideas, and describing the world that Ruskin lived in. Interestingly enough, this book was originally written in German and then translated into English, which explains why the author sometimes compares Ruskin's ideas to contemporaries living in Germany, but it works.

This is really good book