John ruskin best biography

RUSKIN, JOHN (1819–1900), major British critic of art and architecture and influential political writer.

John Ruskin was born in London on 8 February 1819, the only child of Scottish parents who had settled in London and made good.

His parents were powerful influences, for good and ill, in his life.

John ruskin best biography

His mother was an evangelical Christian who destined her son for a career in the Church of England, and from infancy he was made to read and memorize the Bible with this formidable and extremely narrow matriarch. Margaret Ruskin adored her son, but she smothered him emotionally, and many of the sexual and psychological problems that dogged his later life can reasonably be seen as having their roots in her unwise treatment of him.

Ruskin's father, John James Ruskin, was very different.

An extremely wealthy wine merchant and typical Victorian self-made man, John James was widely read in the literature of his young manhood (especially Sir Walter Scott [1771–1832] and Lord