John Ruskin's Correspondence with Joan Severn

Sense and Nonsense Letters

Rachel Dickinson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781905981908
• eBook ISBN: 9781351194778
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

"The great Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin spans 39 volumes and, over the course of the century, further compilations of his private diaries and letters have appeared: but the most important epistolary relationship of his later years, shared with his Scottish cousin Joan (Agnew Ruskin) Severn, has until now been entirely unpublished. These letters - more than 3, 000 of them - have been challenging for Ruskin scholars to draw upon, with their baby-talk, apparent nonsense and unelaborated personal references. Yet they contain important statements of Ruskins opinions on travel, on fashion, on the ideal arts and crafts home, on effective education and other questions: and Ruskin often used his letters to Severn as a substitute for his personal diary. In this important new edition, Dickinson presents an edited, annotated selection of a correspondence which, until now, has been almost inaccessible to scholars of Ruskin and of the Victorian period."

Letters 1864–88

Notes on Editorial Practice

In transcribing the following unpublished material, my aim is simply to make my own research material available to the interested reader. Because I am interested in Ruskin's self-construction and relationship-building within this composite text, it is important to capture, as nearly as possible, what he wrote in the exact way that he wrote it, preserving the idiosyncrasies. While typed versions of hand-written letters must necessarily alter the originals' appearance, it is still possible to indicate it descriptively. I have attempted to reconstruct the original without excessive annotation. The notes are intended to give basic points of explanation.

Sources. The letters transcribed here are from the manuscript letters by John Ruskin to Joan (Agnew Ruskin) Severn in the John Howard Whitehouse Collection held at the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University. These manuscripts are stored and loosely catalogued in a series of boxes entitled 'Bem L [#] / Letters / John Ruskin / to /Joan Severn / [months (where applicable)] / [year(s)]', where the separate numbers and dates are given as represented here by square brackets. Some boxes contain several years' worth of letters, while others span only a few months within one year. These letters are not yet individually catalogued, and therefore do not have individual inventory numbers. For ease of finding undated letters, I have assigned my own working catalogue system: each letter transcribed is given a number denoting where it lay in the sequence of letters extant for a given year when I first consulted them. For example, there are 142 letters from 1869, and the first is listed as '1/142, 1869'. The only exceptions have been when the content of a letter clearly indicates a different chronological ordering; in such cases, they have been re-ordered both in the boxes and in my own transcriptions. Occasionally it is evident that letters are ordered wrongly in the boxes, even though it has not been possible to establish the right chronological sequence for them; in my own transcriptions I have placed them in the best chronological ordering, while noting their position in the boxes in a footnote. I have generally retained the system of ordering in the boxes within the footnotes, for two reasons. First, many of these letters are undated and it may help readers to locate specific manuscripts if they wish to consult the original source. Secondly, because I have transcribed less than a tenth of the extant letters from this particular correspondence, my catalogue system reveals chronological gaps in my use of the letters. The year 1888 offers an extreme example of this: this edition contains just five of 220 letters. In assigning my catalogue number, I have counted the total number of letters in a given year, including each letter or telegraph from Ruskin. I have ignored empty envelopes because these probably belong to undated letters which appear at other points in the sequence. I have listed letters not by Ruskin within the letters in which they were enclosed.

Enclosures. When an enclosure is still with its letter, it has been assigned a number as a subset of the letter. For example, the letter of 9—10 July 1869 is accompanied by enclosures; so Ruskin's letter is numbered '51a', while the enclosures are '51b' and '51c'. I have included a transcription of each epistolary enclosure. If the enclosure is a newspaper clipping or some other kind of addition, I have described it or offered an excerpt, rather than reproducing it in full. Similarly, sketches and diagrams have been described verbally and I have indicated their individual dimensions, expressed numerically as width by height in centimetres.

Addresses and dates. These appear at the head of each entry alongside the number for the selections in my Appendix. If Ruskin included this information in his letter, it is repeated there, as Ruskin (and his subsequent editors, whose pencil notations have greatly aided this process) did not always put the correct date on the letters. The date in the heading is that which I have established for my own sequencing. Where possible, I deduced the date from the postmarks on the accompanying envelope, but this method is not infallible: there is no guarantee that a given letter was originally accompanied by the envelope which now houses it; and many of the letters are not accompanied by an envelope. Place of composition is also listed in the headline. When the place of composition appears in the form of letterhead, it is italicized in the transcription; but Ruskin often carried letterheads for his various homes with him when he travelled, and did not always draw attention to his writing locations. As with dates, the place given in the headline has been established when it differs from the letterhead. Places and dates in square brackets are conjectural. If the stationery is in some way unusual, this is mentioned in the general note to the letter. Readers interested in the dating of Ruskin's stationery are directed to James S. Dearden's pamphlet 'Dating of Ruskin letters: by note-paper styles'.

Later Additions. Several readers have read through these letters. These range from the intended reader (Joan Severn), to Ruskin himself, through the editors of the 'Library Edition', the various keepers of the Whitehouse Collection, and a number of scholars over time. Some have added brief notations to the manuscripts, especially 'A. W.' or Alexander Wedderburn. Typically, these are in pencil and offer a probable date of composition and list contents which help to establish the date for an undated letter or for others which are now filed near it. Brackets are also commonly added. Generally, these correspond to information reproduced or suggested in the 'Library Edition' and are often accompanied by 'AW' at the top of the page. Evidently, such pencil notations were not part of Ruskin's design and would not have been received by Joan Severn as part of the original communication. However, because this matter has played an important role in establishing the chronological order of the letters and because it is useful for tracing editorial decisions made for the 'Library Edition', I have included such references in my notes. Unless otherwise noted, all pencil notations appear on the letter rather than the envelope.

Paragraphing. Ruskin's paragraphing was inconsistent. Sometimes a new paragraph was indented; sometimes an intervening line was left blank; sometimes the multi-functional dash was inserted; sometimes a shift in the train of thought was marked simply by beginning a new line; and sometimes he used combinations of these. I have emulated his paragraphing and line length. I have tried to position postscripts where they appear in relation to the main body, rather than placing them at the end of the letter.

Punctuation. I have preserved Ruskin's punctuation, but his use of the dash poses a particular proble...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Note on References
• Introduction
• LETTERS
• Appendices
• Works Cited
• Index