RUSKIN’S POEMS, WITH HIS ILLUSTRATIONS

RUSKIN, John. Poems… Now First collected from Original Manuscript and Printed Sources. Sunnyside, Orpington: George Allen, 1891. Two volumes. Quarto, original three-quarter vellum, green cloth boards, uncut and unopened. $450.

Limited first edition, one of only 800 copies, of Ruskin’s poetry, written in his “pure and noble style of language,” including his childhood poems (1826-35).

John Ruskin, writer, critic, and artist, was the foremost dictator of public taste in Victorian England. His Seven Lamps of Architecture, Stones of Venice and Modern Painters remain three of his most popular and influential works. This is a complete collection of Ruskin’s poetry, which he began writing at age six or seven. When he was 14, he had three poems published in the 1833 Christmas annual entitled Friendship’s Offering. “For ten years more his verses were very favorably received by the critics of the day” (Daily Graphic). Edited with notes “biographical and critical” by Ruskin’s biographer William Gershom Collingwood, this large-paper limited edition was published by George Allen, who joined a class in drawing taught by Ruskin, and later became Ruskin’s assistant.

Text and plates fine, very minor light soiling to spine of Volume I. A near-fine copy.