Victorian Thinkers: Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Morris (Past Masters)

Victorian Thinkers contains studies of four of the most influential critics of 19th-century British culture. Each was heralded a prophet in his own lifetime, and yet each was also regarded as misguided, and even mad, by his contemporaries. Their interests in art and culture led them to develop views on society and economics. Carlyle was a writer of extraordinary stature, radical in thought and style; Ruskin, who began his career as a critic of painting and architecture, developed his views to produce critiques of economics and social welfare; Arnold was a poet and literary critic, a definer of "culture" who later turned to social issues; and Morris, renowned for his work as artist and designer, championed a revolutionary socialism which would honour the civilizing effects of the arts. A.L. Le Quesne is also the author of "After Kilvert". George Landow has also written "The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin" and "Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art and Thought". Stephan Collini is also the author of "Liberalism and Sociology", "That Noble Science of Politics" (with Donald Winch and John Burrow) and "Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850-1930". Peter Stansky is also the author of "Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts".