Complete Text
- Library Edition Introduction
- Preface
- I. The Roots of Honour
- II. The Veins of Wealth
- III. "Qui Judicatis Terram"
- IV. Ad Valorem
Political Economy and Modern Economics
- Ruskin’s definition of political economics
- Ruskin’s definition of mercantile (or evil) economics
- Ruskin on the origins of riches, poverty, and economic inequality
- Fundamental neutrality of wealth
- Disgraceful modern idea of “buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest”
- “The chief value and virtue of money consists in its having power over human beings”
- Ruskin’s attack on the limitations of classical economic views of people, motivation, and work
- Ruskin on value, wealth, and price — Unto This Last’s “Ad Valorem”
- Ruskin as interpreter of society (chapter from the Oxford Past masters Ruskin volume)
- Thirty-five Ruskinian proposals for political policy and reform
- Ruskin on the relation of capitalist wealth and war (left column)
- Ruskin, Gandhi, & Unto This Last
- Defines possession not as a legal or material fact but as an open-ended activity
- Ruskinian paternalism denies the liberal principle that each class is the proper guardian of its own interests (Sawyer)
Genre, Mode, and Style
- Uses elements of Carlylean satire
- Satiric definition: What is the nature of possession?
- Satiric emblems
- A Symbolical Grotesque from Ruskin's "The Roots of Honor"
- Ruskin as critic of society
Literary Relations: Sources and Authors Cited
- Biblical allusions and quotations from Scripture (list with links)
- Debts to Carlyle’s Past and Present
- Cicero
- Arthur Helps
- Horace
- Alexander Pope
- Alexander Pope — “Moral Essays”
- Plato
- Echoes of Sterling’s The Statesman's Manual (Sawyer)
- Xenophon
- Influence upon both the Labour Party and Gandhi
Contemporary and Later Reception
- Vituperative attacks in Literary Gazette, Saturday Reviewer, etc.
- Margaret Oliphant on Unto This Last
- Thomas Carlyle’s enthusiastic praise
Critical Observations and Interpretations
- Role of titles of each chapter (Sawyer)
- Use of Exodus imagery in political argument
- Autobiographical sources of the nightmarish imagery (Sawyer)
- Word associations to stress divine elements of secular virtues (Sawyer)
- Moderation a leitmotif of his career from Modern Painters to Unto This Last(Sawyer)
- Unto This Last introduces method of reasoning through visual opposition (Sawyer)
- Ruskinian mythmaking at its most powerful (Sawyer)
- Focus on the human in Stones of Venice culminates in Unto This Last
Last modified 18 October 2024