"John Ruskin, whose life almost exactly coincided with that of Queen Victoria (1819 to 1900), was one of the most influential cultural and intellectual figures of the Victorian age. He was fundamentally a post-Romantic visionary: this fact underlies his activities as an art critic and writer on architecture - and also his passionate advocacy of an alternative model for England." "This new biography shows him as a whole, demonstrating that his seemingly disparate ideas accrue into a developed - though constantly evolving - vision of the good society, and that the public activity of the man was at every stage closely associated with his disastrous private life." "Published to celebrate the centenary of Ruskins death, this biography throws new light on a complex character, whose interests encompassed art, architecture, morality, criticism and literature, the environment, education, the disastrous changes that he saw overtaking the climate ('The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century') and the establishment of a new political order for the working man."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved