ABSTRACT
The initial public reaction to Unto this Last, as it appeared in the Cornhill Magazine from August to November 1860, was hostile. It was berated by reviewers, and among the many strongly worded opinions, the Saturday Review for 10 November 1860 was most famous in its notoriously trenchant criticism: ‘worse than ridiculous’, ‘positively wicked’, showing the ‘utter imbecility of Mr. Ruskin’s reasoning powers’. The anonymous reviewer said, caricaturing and condemning Ruskin’s views with a viciousness remarkable even by the standards of a highly flammable Victorian press. Ruskin’s essays on the first principles of political economy belonged also within a domestic, family context, and the pressure of this, and Ruskin’s negotiation with it, left legible traces in various parts of the essays. John James’s 5 October letter was not the last of his revealing correspondence with the Cornhill on the matter of Unto this Last.
