Francis O'Gorman Knihy

Challenging the conventional view of Ruskin as a conservative thinker on gender roles, this collection of essays reexamines his influence and contributions to gender discussions. By analyzing his work, particularly "On Queens' Gardens," the authors provide fresh insights into Victorian gender dynamics and their relevance today. The essays aim to redefine Ruskin's legacy, highlighting the complexities of his thoughts on gender and inviting a reevaluation of ongoing debates surrounding these issues.

The Victorian era produced artistic achievements, technological inventions and social developments that continue to shape how we live today. This Companion offers authoritative coverage of that period's culture and its contexts in a group of specially commissioned essays reflecting the current state of research in each particular field. Covering topics from music to politics, art to technology, war to domestic arts, journalism to science, the essays address multiple aspects of the Victorian world. The book explores what ‘Victorian' has come to mean and how an idea of the ‘Victorian' might now be useful to historians of culture. It explores too the many different meanings of ‘culture' itself in the nineteenth century and in contemporary scholarship. An invaluable resource for students of literature, history, and interdisciplinary studies, this Companion analyses the nature of nineteenth-century British cultural life and offers searching perspectives on their culture as seen from ours.

Introduction 1. Cultures of Memory 2. The Making of Modern Forgetting 3. Contemporary Cultures of Amnesia 4. Forgetfulness in Contemporary Cultural Narrative 5. Learning Pasts 6. The Problems of Forgetting National and Local Histories Acknowledgements References Index

Charts the emergence of the contemporary idea of everyday worry--the fearful, non-pathological, and usually hidden questioning about uncertain futures. O'Gorman shows worry to be a natural companion in a world where we try to live by reason and believe we have the right to choose. Offering a personal account of an all-too-common human experience, and of a word that has become invisible in its familiarity, the author explores how the modern world has shaped our everyday anxieties. --From publisher description.

John Ruskin was one of the greatest Victorian critics of art and society, but he was also preoccupied with politics, economics and education. This pocket-sized biography explores his influence on his own age and ours, examining his work, his relationships and his creative life.