Beschreibung:

RUSKIN, John (1819-1900). A collection of 50 autograph letters signed to several correspondents, comprising: 39 ALS ("most "John Ruskin" a few "JR") to the bookseller F.S. Ellis. Various places (Brantwood, Lancashire; Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Geneva, Denmark Hill, etc.), 17 February 1870 - 20 May [1886?], 68 pages, 8vo and 12mo., many on headed stationery, several with pencilled explanatory notes (no doubt by Ellis) ; RUSKIN. 6 ALS to George Brightling, 6 March 1872-19 Feb 1895, 8 page, 8vo and 12mo , most in references to insuring certain gems he will loan to an exhibition; RUSKIN. 5 ALS to Lovett and others, 1879 and n.d., 6 pages, 8vo and 12mo. Together 50 letters, each tipped into a folio album of blue hand-made paper . FINELY BOUND FOR F.S. ELLIS in brown morocco, upper cover with a central medallion of flowers and leaves in red and green onlays and gilt-tooling, with initials "J.R. and "F.S.E." in the center; spine with gilt-lettering, vellum endleaves and doublures, signed "DC [Douglas Cockerell] 1899" on back doublure. RUSKIN'S READING. A fine, unpublished archive of Ruskin's warm and enthusiastic correspondence with Ellis, inquiring about a wide range of books he wishes to acquire, commenting on modern poets, expressing his delight in the landscape, and discussing publication of Fors Clavigero , 1871, and Notes on Some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy , 1875 ("there's a nice spicy flavour in it...quite a loving cup for the Academy"); his uncertain health, travels, etc. 17 Feb 1870: "Will you send...the best recent edition of Vasari...I am terribly nervous about chance of misreading anything..." - 26 Feb 1870: "...look out for me a copy of Le Normand and De Witt work on Greek vases...Tennyson is quite fallen - he must be ill." -- 5 May 1870: "...Will you inform the French house that the book is for the Art Gallery of Oxford, and cannot be placed there if ill executed. Let the plain copy be sent without binding..." -- [1871]: "...Can you find out for me, anyhow, if there was an analysis of 'Fors Clavigero' [ Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain , 1871-87] - [1872]: "Thank you for getting the Utopia for me. What an infinitely wise, infinitely foolish book it is! Right in all that it asks. Insane, in venturing to ask it all at once, so making its own wisdom folly for everyone, & becoming the most mischeivous book ever written - except for Quixote..." -- 19 Sept 1872: "I find I want the 1st and 2nd vols. of the Earthly Paradise..." -- 20 Jan 1875, having received a selection of books "full of interest to me. I had never studied Hogarth before, and he and Fielding pull so splendidly together...[I]n modern literature, every fine passage of sentiment is liable to have a lurking taint...ballades would do me not the least harm, while Tennyson's Vivien would do me much....The worst I consider Christina Rossetti. I've kept that for the sheer wonder of it! How she could--like Arthur Hughes -sink so low after their pretty nursery rhymes....I am very glad to know the rarity of that old German Bible...its cuts are splendid, nearly all, I believe, designed by Holbein..." -- 19 May 1879: "...I want a nicely bound edition of united prose and poetry..." - Feb 1881: "I've been speechless with anger since you let go the Guy Mannering Ms....Please will you get a good edition of Julian the Apostate...I do a sentence more of the Bible of Amiens. Gibbon quotes the Leipsic edition...any big print will do..." -- Feb 1881: "...Seriously, my dear Ellis, I do want you to secure every Scott manuscript that comes into the market..." -- 11 June 1884: "...I send you an old book which has been inherited by my washerwoman! Can you infuse her mind with reverence for literature by giving her a few shillings for it...?" -- 20 May 1886: "I never write cruelly to anyone: a surgeon has sometimes to cut deep...It is well that he can give pain, - he never desires to do so...on every subject at presen