John Ruskin

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-10-07

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, and also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, social thinker and philanthropist. Born in London, the only child of a prosperous sherry importer, he was educated largely at home before Christ Church, Oxford, and made his name with the five volumes of Modern Painters (1843-1860), begun as a defence of J. M. W. Turner. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851-1853) shaped the Gothic Revival, and his championing of the Pre-Raphaelites and later his writings on political economy, Unto This Last (1860) above all, made him one of the most influential thinkers of his century; he was Oxford's first Slade Professor of Fine Art. His one work of fiction, The King of the Golden River, was written in 1841 for the twelve-year-old Effie Gray, whom he later married and from whom the marriage was annulled, and published in 1851. He spent his last decades at Brantwood, on Coniston Water in the Lake District.

Universe(s)

Books

• The King of the Golden River (1851) · The King of the Golden River Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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