Fors Clavigera (1871-1884), Ruskin’s serial ‘Letters to the Workmen of Great Britain’, is his most controversial and personal text. ‘I neither wish to please, nor displease you; but to provoke you to think’, Ruskin told his readers.Discursive, angry, and uncompromising, Fors is now seen as the most innovative and in many ways the most modern work of his later years. Interest in its extraordinary achievement has steadily expanded. Tim Hilton’s biography identifies Fors Clavigera as ‘Ruskin’s masterpiece’. The lack of an accessible edition has obstructed the testing of Hilton’s claim.This selected edition of Fors Clavigera is the first since the Library edition completed its 3-volume text (long out of print, and now often hard to find) in 1907. It provides an extensive and carefully chosen selection of the most challenging writing in Fors, including several complete letters and sequences. The densely allusive text is elucidated with full annotation, and the edition is provided with a critical introduction, bibliographical notes, and suggestions for further reading. Ruskin’s original illustrations, essential for the understanding of his argument, are reproduced.This edition will at last make Fors Clavigera, disturbing and endlessly fascinating, available to modern readers.
