19c 19th-century architecture art art-history arts britain city civilization cultural-studies english english-literature essays european folio gothic historical history italy literature medieval non-fiction nonfiction proust reference renaissance ruskin sociology theory travel travel-writing venice victorian victorians world-history

John Ruskin, Victorian England's greatest writer on art and literature, believed himself an adopted son of Venice, and his feelings for this city are exquisitely expressed in The Stones of Venice. This edition contains Ruskin's famous essay "The Nature of Gothic," a marvelously descriptive tour of Venice before its postwar restoration. As Ruskin wrote in 1851, "Thank God I am here, it is a Paradise of Cities."