Bound by Mansell. Blue leather binding with embossed pattern on the boards. Gilt title on the spine. All edges gilt. Dimensions are for one volume.

Two lovely matching volumes.

The Crown of Wild Olive (1866, enlarged in 1873) collects some of the best specimens of Ruskin’s Carlylean manner, notably the lecture “Traffic” of 1864, which memorably draws its audience’s attention to the hypocrisy manifested by their choice of Gothic architecture for their churches but Neoclassical designs for their homes.

Sesame and Lilies – John Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies”, first published in 1865, stands as a classic 19th-century statement on the natures and duties of men and women. Although widely popular in its time, the work in its entirety has been out of print since the early 20th century. This volume reunites the two halves of the work: “Of Kings’ Treasuries”, in which Ruskin critiques Victorian manhood, and “Of Queens’ Gardens”, in which he counsels women to take their places as the moral guides of men and urges the parents of girls to educate them to this end. Feminist critics of the 1960s and 1970s regarded “Of Queens’ Gardens” as an exemplary expression of repressive Victorian ideas about femininity, and they paired it with John Stuart Mill’s more progressive “Subjection of Women”.

John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.