I must say I never expected this to be such a stunner. I have read it twice but confess that I am sitting down again. This has to be the 'Matrix' of the 1800's as it certainly turns conventional thinking on its head...

The introduction by Clive Wilmer is extremely enlightening as it provides a background against which the book can be thoroughly enjoyed. This book cleared a lot of doubts I had for a long time on many things and I must say raised twice as many questions about what I thought right :-)

Ruskin has been praised by many people as being the vioce of truth. He starts his main essay from a story in the Bible and then blows the reader away with his acute judgements and impeccable logic. In the end all you can do is but agreee that 'There is no Wealth but Life'

Also recommend 'The Kingdom of God is Within You' by Tolstoy.

_Unto This Last_ is a series of four essays on political economy, which were originally designed to be published in Cornhill Magazine. The essays caused so much contemporary anger and scorn, however, that their publication was discontinued.

Ruskin began as an art critic, who wrote in favor of a naturalism based in the imagination rather than the eye. His works discussed the moral and political dimensions of art and architecture, and it was probably natural that this would lead him into his interest in socialism and the powerful writing found in _Unto This Last_. He was passionately arguing against the Utilitarianism of writers such as John Stuart Mill and others who saw immutable laws of economy which were rooted in anything except justice. His assertion was that the accumulation of money was in fact an accumulation of power rather than wealth, and necessarily resulted in an imbalance which adversely affected society. For instance, he said that a successful factory which polluted the environment could not be termed profitable because of the resulting damage to society itself.

This collection of Ruskin's works (edited and with commentary by Clive Wilmer) contains the whole of _Unto This Last_ and enough of a selection of his other works to give a sense of the chronological position of the essays in Ruskin's career.

The book features an early fairy tale by Ruskin which was written for his wife, an excerpt from _The Stones of Venice_ which discusses the nature of Gothic architecture, excerpts from _the Two Paths_ and _Modern Painters_, two lectures which were published as parts of _The Crown of Wild Olive_ and _Sesame and Lilies_, and finally ends with letters 7 and 10 from _Fors Clavigera_.

Ghandi credited _Unto This Last_ with providing part of the impetus behind his transformation. And it would not be ridiculous for me to say that the book forced a radical reexamination of many of my own assumptions and ideas. It's also a pleasure to read, with beautiful as well as thought-provoking prose. Worthwhile reading for more than students of Victoriana.

Thom Gunn is a wonderful poet and an incisive, elegant prose stylist. This collection of essays from the past 30 years or so is a fine overview of Gunn's chief interests and ideas. Three essays stand out. First, the essay on the poetry of Thomas Hardy is a brilliant discussion of that poet and novelist's melancholy, aching verse. I learned about several important poems that I had read before but that hadn't drawn my deep attention. Gunn's exegesis of those poems is stunningly erudite and useful. Second, Gunn's presentation on the poetry of Fulke Greville is insightful and deeply inspiring. The work of this fine 16th-century poet deserves to be better known. Yvor Winters tried his best to get Greville regarded as one of the greats, but Gunn has taken that work to the next level by lending his unquestionable credibility to an effort to get people to read the religious, philosophical poetry of Greville, who was chums with Sir Philip Sydney. Third, and best, is the deeply stirring memorial essay on Yvor Winters, the controversial critic who stormed around the American literary scene, mostly and sadly without much effect, in the first half of the last century. Gunn studied with Yvor at Stanford in the late 50s, and his depiction of the great and somewhat eccentric (perhaps "exceedingly intense" is a better phrase) poet and critic is first-rate, even if you don't a thing about Winters. There are a number of other distinguished essays in this book, and every piece offers at least some excellment commentary on a variety of writers, many of them modern favorites. Gunn has been a formalist poet most of his career, and one of the best in my judgment, though he has worked well in free verse, too. His understanding of poetry, from the viewpoint of one of the finest formalists of our time, is badly needed in this chaotic literary age. You will learn a great deal about poetry and formal poetry reading Gunn. Some people have been scared off from Gunn because he is an open (and almost nonchalantly open) homosexual who has written about the gay experience in his poetry, but don't permit the idea that Gunn is only a "gay" poet keep you from some of the best criticism written during the last 30 years. I am not gay, and I have learned a great deal about poetry and even religious poetry from Thom Gunn. We need a lot more critics like him, gay and straight. Give him a try, and don't pass up his poetry either.

I suspect that many people who come across this book will be art lovers, specifically admirers of Art Noveau and perhaps even recent visitors to the exhibition of this particular form of turn-of-the-century expression at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. And this is, notwithstanding the prominence of the title story and Clive Wilmer's introduction, which focuses on the political aspects of Morris's writing, a book about the author's vision of beauty, of craftsmanship not for its own sake, but with the aim of producing work of skill and magnificence, and, as a secondary but vital consideration, the satisfaction of the artist. Morris comes across as a brilliant man, devoted to his many crafts (he taught himself thirteen) and passionate about human equality, though the impression from his writing is that the quality of the artist's skill, and particularly in the field of the decorative (what he calls the 'lesser') arts, matters more to him than the egalitarianism he trumpets. The political pieces, such as the title story, which comprises almost half the book and portrays Morris's vision of an ideal society in the year 2102, are the weakest, speculating as they do about a population of uniform mind in its espousal of the superiority of the Mediaeval ideal of art and its fanatical rejection of progress and technology. Genetics, the evolutionary territorial imperative, the diversity of human imagination which has since spawned the Information Age, are all swept aside by the juggernaut of Morris's Luddite, Gothic world-view (and although I accept the context in which he writes, namely late-Victorian London, I can't ignore his failure to mention the benefits of the industrialisation he despises, such as the increased life-expectancy, the majesty of the scientific leaps within his lifetime). Nonetheless, Morris is an inspiring polemicist: his rejection of the State, his fierce and uncompromising belief in his ideas, his utterly convincing support for the rightness of the individual's potential for common-sense and ability to recognise what is good, what is true, in the face of the pronouncements of authority, mark him as a defender of freedom quite apart from many of his orthodox Marxist contemporaries.