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Praeterita: The Autobiography Of John Ruskin

by John Ruskin

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 46 ratings · 4 reviews

Praeterita is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of the 19th century. Written by Ruskin in the 1880s between attacks of brain fever, it gives a fascinating account of his upbringing in a severely respectable Victorian household, his Continental travels, his friends and relations, and the development and refinement of his aesthetic tastes.

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Published November 16th 1978 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published 1899)

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Nov 07, 2011 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well this is Volume two completed. And it takes him up to 1849 and the death of his beloved cousin Mary. My set of books is an edition from 1899. At this point the great man was still actually alive and it is astounding to be holding this lovely heavy volume, letting it fall open and turn the pages and smell the history of Lord knows how many readers rising off them. ( Beat that if you can Kindle ) .This is the account of his rising into manhood and the publications of his first few volumes of w Well this is Volume two completed. And it takes him up to 1849 and the death of his beloved cousin Mary. My set of books is an edition from 1899. At this point the great man was still actually alive and it is astounding to be holding this lovely heavy volume, letting it fall open and turn the pages and smell the history of Lord knows how many readers rising off them. ( Beat that if you can Kindle ) .This is the account of his rising into manhood and the publications of his first few volumes of writing, of which there were so many. The book itself breathes history. On my shelves I have a good number of books published in the 1880's and 1890's and i never fail to get that frisson of wonder at the thought of all the other men and women who have turned these pages and been wowed by the ideas and reflections they encounter. Praeterita is not going to turn you into a Ruskin scholar but it might well encourage you to want to find out more about this man's incredible brain and courage and the enormous influence he had on so much of society; many of his ideas came to be adopted and put into practice in the UK but many of them years after his death which came just a year or so after the printing of the volume i have been reading.

There is a gentle poking of humour at his younger self ; at his dismissive attitudes, his quick judgements, his ideas which, though new and revolutionary in some spheres, become he now sees as swiftly entrenched and unchangeable as the ones he mocks. He, with the distance of years, does not take his younger self too seriously but you still catch glimpses of the incisive wisdom and preparedness to raise his head above the parapet of popular opinion which was to be so prevalent in his middle years.

He often quotes from the diaries of this younger man in the account and some of the entries are beautiful

' And always the steep banks, one above another, melting into terraces of pure velvet, gilded with corn; Here and there a black - jet-black - crag of slate breaking into a frown above them, and mouldering away down into the gloomy torrent bed, fringed on its opposite edge, a grisly cliff, with delicate birch and pine rising against the snow light of Mont Blanc '

or again the simple description of a river

' the water thrills imperceptibly through the crannies of its fallen stones, deeper and deeper every instant; till within three fathoms of its first trickling thread,it is a deep stream of dazzling brightness, dividing into swift branches eager for their work at the mill, or their ministry to the meadows. '

my ' Got up, had breakfast, it rained ' pales somewhat ...more

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Jan 14, 2014 Buttle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Everyman edition of this book is a lovely production. Ruskin writing style is especially beautiful - which is why I found this book such a pleasure to read.

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Feb 03, 2009 Dan Crews rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a very long autobiography. It has many things in it that may not be important to someone who is not interested in Ruskin. If you have a preoccupation with the man then it is indispensable. Many things fall in to place. It is very long but the unexpected gems are truly delightful. And the last of it very flavorful. It is really for those that have patience.

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Nov 03, 2010 Valissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art."

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About John Ruskin

John Ruskin was born on 8 February 1819 at 54 Hunter Street, London, the only child of Margaret and John James Ruskin. His father, a prosperous, self-made man who was a founding partner of Pedro Domecq sherries, collected art and encouraged his son's literary activities, while his mother, a devout evangelical Protestant, early dedicated her son to the service of God and devoutly wished him to beco John Ruskin was born on 8 February 1819 at 54 Hunter Street, London, the only child of Margaret and John James Ruskin. His father, a prosperous, self-made man who was a founding partner of Pedro Domecq sherries, collected art and encouraged his son's literary activities, while his mother, a devout evangelical Protestant, early dedicated her son to the service of God and devoutly wished him to become an Anglican bishop. Ruskin, who received his education at home until the age of twelve, rarely associated with other children and had few toys. During his sixth year he accompanied his parents on the first of many annual tours of the Continent. Encouraged by his father, he published his first poem, "On Skiddaw and Derwent Water," at the age of eleven, and four years later his first prose work, an article on the waters of the Rhine.

In 1836, the year he matriculated as a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he wrote a pamphlet defending the painter Turner against the periodical critics, but at the artist's request he did not publish it. While at Oxford (where his mother had accompanied him) Ruskin associated largely with a wealthy and often rowdy set but continued to publish poetry and criticism; and in 1839 he won the Oxford Newdigate Prize for poetry. The next year, however, suspected consumption led him to interrupt his studies and travel, and he did not receive his degree until 1842, when he abandoned the idea of entering the ministry. This same year he began the first volume of Modern Painters after reviewers of the annual Royal Academy exhibition had again savagely treated Turner's works, and in 1846, after making his first trip abroad without his parents, he published the second volume, which discussed his theories of beauty and imagination within the context of figural as well as landscape painting.

On 10 April 1848 Ruskin married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, and the next year he published The Seven Lamps of Architecture, after which he and Effie set out for Venice. In 1850 he published The King of the Golden River, which he had written for Effie nine years before, and a volume of poetry, and in the following year, during which Turner died and Ruskin made the acquaintance of the Pre-Raphaelites, the first volume of The Stones of Venice. The final two volumes appeared in 1853, the summer of which saw Millais, Ruskin, and Effie together in Scotland, where the artist painted Ruskin's portrait. The next year his wife left him and had their marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation, after which she later married Millais. During this difficult year, Ruskin defended the Pre-Raphaelites, became close to Rossetti, and taught at the Working Men's College.

In 1855 Ruskin began Academy Notes, his reviews of the annual exhibition, and the following year, in the course of which he became acquainted with the man who later became his close friend, the American Charles Eliot Norton, he published the third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters and The Harbours of England. He continued his immense productivity during the next four years, producing The Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art in 1857, The Elements of Perspective and The Two Paths in 1859, and the fifth volume of Modern Painters and the periodical version of Unto This Last in 1860. During 1858, in the midst of this productive period, Ruskin decisively abandoned the evangelical Protestantism which had so shaped his ideas and attitudes, and he also met Rose La Touche, a young Irish Protestant girl with whom he was later to fall deeply and tragically in love.

Throughout the 1860s Ruskin continued writing and lecturing on social and political economy, art, and myth, and during this decade he produced the Fraser's Magazine "Essays on Political Economy" (1863); revised as Munera Pulveris, 1872), Sesame and Lilies (1865), The Grown of Wild Olive (1866), The Ethics of the Dust (1866), Time and Tide, and [2/3] The Queen of the Air (1869), his study of Gr ...more

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