The Stones of Venice, Volume I: The Foundation Volume II: The Sea-Stories Volume III: The Fall.
This key text of the aesthetic movement was first published from 1851 to 1853. Its "obsession with the function and aesthetics of architecture, over and beyond its history and practice, again proved a revolutionary success" (PMM). The work's importance lies "in its celebration of the Byzantine and the Gothic, which had an immediate effect on Victorian architects, who began to introduce Romanesque forms and Venetian and Veronese colour and sculptural features into their designs" (ODNB). The most famous chapter, "The Nature of Gothic" (II, pp. 151-231), was twice separately reprinted in the author's lifetime, firstly for the inaguaration of the London Working Men's College in 1854, secondly by William Morris in 1892. In this chapter, "Ruskin argued that under conditions of industrialization and the division of labour, social disharmony and industrial unrest were bound to occur, because the previously expressive craftsman - Ruskin's ideal working man - had been reduced to the condition of a machine" (ODNB). Grolier English 100, 92 (for first edition); Printing and the Mind of Man 315 (for Ruskin). Three volumes, large octavo (280 x 175 mm). Finely bound by R. Bedford in brown morocco, raised bands on spine, compartments richly tooled and lettered in gilt, triple fillet gilt borders on covers, turn ins tooled in gilt, marbled endpapers, edges gilt. With 53 plates, including 5 chromolithographs by William Dickes, all after Ruskin, by Thomas Lupton, J. C. Armytage, R. P. Cuff, and others; further illustrations in the text. Vol. II with additional plate bound in at p. 282, and a further loosely inserted. Newspaper clipping obituary of Ruskin pasted to first blank of vol. I with concomitant offsetting.