The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton

Ruskin's letters to Norton reflect and express, often more vividly than his own public prose, the spiritual, amatory, artistic, and cultural preoccupations of Ruskin's life.

John Ruskin first met Charles Eliot Norton in 1855. Norton was the American counterpart of a man of letters. With a common distaste for the industrial and scientific directions of modern civilisation, the two men became intimate correspondents and the letters they exchanged until shortly before Ruskin's death in 1900 reflect and express, often more vividly than his own public prose, the spiritual, amatory, artistic, and cultural preoccupations of Ruskin's life. The revelations were so candid that Norton, as one of Ruskin's literary executors, burned many of the letters, altered a number of others in his Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton of 1904, and sought to efface his side of the correspondence almost entirely. In this 1987 volume, Dr Ousby and Dr Bradley present a far more complete and accurate record of the exchanges, which comprise 333 from Ruskin to Norton and 63 in return.