Ruskin and Social Reform: Ethics and Economics in the Victorian Age (International Library of Historical Studies) - Hardcover

Cockram, Gill

9781845113490: Ruskin and Social Reform: Ethics and Economics in the Victorian Age (International Library of Historical Studies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1845113497 ISBN 13: 9781845113490

Publisher: I.B.Tauris, 2007

In the first book to analyze the form and influence of Ruskin's social theory, Gill Cockram looks at Ruskin's significant contribution to social and intellectual thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a field often overlooked by 19th century historians, 'Ruskin and Social Reform' clarifies for the first time how Ruskin's social theory was disseminated to a much wider readership than was evident in the mid-nineteenth century and how it was that Ruskin achieved great prominence as a social philosopher. Cockram examines the chronological development of Ruskin's thought and establishes the extent of his influence among the nascent labour movement. It was the support of a thinker as original and as unconventional as Ruskin that helped to challenge the laissez-faire conformities of classical economics and launched the quest to find a more ethical and humane basis for social policy-making.

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About the Author:

Gill Cockram completed her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is currently involved in further research of the history of political ideas.

Review:

''This is a fine work, a product... of some considerable scholarship, and it adds significantly to our understanding of the permeation of Ruskin’s ideas amongst the late-Victorian and early-Edwardian intelligentsia...It also reminds us of the continuing pertinence of Ruskin’s political economy, not least his distinction between ‘illth’ and wealth; particularly when the contemporary proliferation of the former has come to jeopardize our very existence...'' -- Labor History

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