ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the question of how we can read Ruskin diachronically across the lifetimes of readership who have engaged with his ideas and taken fresh understanding and sharpened perspectives from his writing. It is also about the possibilities of re-reading Ruskin imaginatively for heritage conservation now, to create meaning and fresh insights for our own time. It considers the challenges of reading Ruskin in the 21st century, suggests biographical and other key sources for reading further about his life and work, and gives an historical overview of his publications. Michel Foucault's essay, ‘What is an Author’ suggests a mode of reading Ruskin as ‘a founder of discursive possibility’. The concluding extract is from his early Lectures on Architecture and Painting delivered in Edinburgh in 1853, and compares the character of the Old and New Towns, now a World Heritage Site.
