(Dedicated to Anthony Harris and Cedric Quayle.) Milestone birthdays will be celebrated this summer by several veteran contributors to the work of Ruskin’s Guild of St George, an organisation which is itself celebrating its sesquicentenary this year. Two such...

Descriptions abound of Ruskin as a lecturer at Oxford. As a student Michael Sadler (1861—1943) greatly admired Ruskin, and he became his life-long disciple. Sadler, who was a historian, dedicated his career to education, and served for many years as a university...

Edith Hope Scott was one of Ruskin’s most devoted and active disciples. St George’s Day in the year in which we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Guild of St George seems an appropriate moment to remember her. Scott was one of the people who banded together in...

When Ruskin died in January 1900, the following pulpit appraisal was delivered by the Rev. William Knibb Burford (1863-1944),* in a sermon at the Congregationalist Wicker Chapel, in Sheffield, of which he was pastor from 1888 to 1901. Rev. Burford’s testimony is an...

A little Easter weekend reading for you. A paper I have written in the recently published John Ruskin's Europe can be read here. The paper attempts to explore how Ruskin’s ideas were received in Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and (briefly) Russia. Tracing Ruskin’s...

David Downs (1818-1888) was Ruskin’s gardener and his go-to man whenever one of his many projects needed a boost. Ruskin scholars generally suggest that Downs was a rather put-upon loyal family servant whose nous brought order to Ruskin’s chaotic schemes. But Downs's...

For more than 20 years, Jen Shepherd was a key member of the team at the Ruskin Library and Research Centre at Lancaster University. Her recent death represents a sad loss to all who knew her. THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS Whenever I arrived at the Ruskin Library, Jen was...

As many of us prepare for Christmas in some of the strangest circumstances we can remember, let’s look to Ruskin’s wider circle for cheering memories Christmas Day 1928, the Sheffield Daily Telegraph reported, would mark the 50th wedding anniversaries of “Mr and Mrs...

I promised in my last blog, which was about the Ruskin Exhibition held in Manchester in 1904, to remedy the absence in biographical dictionaries of an entry for J. Ernest Phythian. Phythian was one of Manchester’s foremost Ruskinians and deserves to be remembered for...

In the spring of 1904, a major Ruskin Exhibition was mounted at the Manchester City Art Gallery. It presented drawings and paintings by Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, pictures of architecture and copies by Ruskin’s pupils, as well as portraits and...