The Stones of Venice
Ruskin spent years measuring Venetian buildings and arguing that their details were evidence of the society that made them. The book is not a guide; it is a case for the Gothic as a moral style, built on the claim that good architecture depends on the freedom of the people who carve it.
Some of his historical assertions have not held up, and the prose can be overbearing. But the method, looking closely at a capital or a window and asking who made it and under what conditions, remains a useful way to look at any building. The chapter on the nature of Gothic is the one to read first.
Public-domain status
First published in 1851. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; John Ruskin died in 1900, so this work has been free to republish there since 1971.
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- Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen, 1813
- Venice — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
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