Ruskin, again, came across to me as an opinionated bigot who was very pleased with himself and whom I would not have liked at all. Yes, he wrote and lectured some 150 years ago, and our social mores have changed considerably, but he annoyed me. Perhaps I might have enjoyed him as a lecturer, but the way these essays were presented (presumably "as Written") I very quickly got so disturbed that I could not follow his points. His continued use of phrases and clauses in apposition ruined any flow of information. They made the essays virtually unreadable. Even the book's editor added 28 pages of notes to explain what Ruskin was saying. The "Brief Sketch of the Author's Life" include was somewhat illuminating. The added commentary "Ruskin as Economist" was needed - to explain why Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch added the collection of essays to his Kings Treasuries of Literature. ( )

I didn't read this edition, I actually just got the text off the internet, but I imagine it's the same. It is a surprisingly readable critique of political economic philosophy, particularly going to town on one Mr. J.S. Mill. Overall, it is pretty utopian; I can agree with him about the way the economy should be run and that happiness should be the highest priority, but what does writing about that really accomplish? He ignores the foundation of production and capitalism, which is that it always tends toward more production/growth/expansion of capital and so-forth. It is not compatible with human happiness. My favorite quote:

For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

( )

In his inimitable style, Ruskin takes in his powerful grip the trunk of the trunk of the tree of modern economic thought and shakes the entire growth. Rejected by early readers as "absolute nonsense" and "total absurdity," the ideas of this book have continued for a century and a half to exert a significant influence on social thought, deeply affecting figures like Gandhi as well as (via Bernard Leach) Yanagi Soetsu, a key figure in the Japanese peasant art movements of the Taisho period (1912-1926). ( )