Beschreibung:

Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life [-Dilecta_ Correspondence, Diary Notes, and Extracts from Books, illustrating Praeterita], 31 original parts in 6 vol., FIRST EDITION, EXTENSIVELY EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED FOR CHARLES E. GOODSPEED WITH THE INSERTION OF 25 AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED BY RUSKIN, 23 autograph letters and notes by contemporaries (including Turner), numerous sketches, photographs, cut signatures, annotated proof sheets, and upwards of 280 additional engravings and plates (some coloured), the collection comprising: i) Group of 25 autograph letters signed ("J. Ruskin", "John Ruskin", "J.R.") to various correspondents, including: "Darling Reille", an unknown child ("...although May is irresistible, And Alice is so bewitching – yet you were my first Love... ps Don't frizz the hair quite so high this time..."); Miss Rudkin, organising a spring dress for Arthur Severn's daughter whom he finds "...already tall enough – to become – a pretty costume, and refresh and refine my savage mind..."; an unknown recipient recalling an encounter with Charles Darwin ("...A couple of years ago, a man, Darwin was walking with me on my garden terrace and stopped to look at a strange form of (I forget what) flower. – "Now – why is that shaped so" – he said. Why should you want to know? I answered – Oh – he said, laughing – but with the perfectly frank expression of a man partly ashamed of a weakness – "I always want to know" – "And I never do." – ended this 'discussion' in that direction – and we went into lunch..."); Charles Newton on his engagement to Effie Gray ("...I believe indeed that it is every way better for me that I should marry... Miss Gray is a good girl... will be a very noble creature – and far above my deservings..."); another to Newton (speaking of his recent trip to Europe ("...that vast blunder St Peters..."), the effect of political feeling on architecture, hoping to "get out of Jephson's clutches" soon to show him some architectural drawings completed in Italy); the Revd A. Tighe Gregory (mentioning his nervous condition "...the most trivial matter will sometime sicken and sting me...", his debt to Turner for art and Carlyle for literature and marvelling how they, like him "should be irreligious" but that he is open to "all influences"); Lady Naesmyth (sending copies of verses by Rose La Touche despairing she has gone to Ireland and may not love him when she returns); four to his friend and neighbour at Brantwood, Susan Beever, including a highly personal undated letter regarding "...that wretched child..." [Rose La Touche], complaining of her evangelism and his frustration ("...a husband can always say a little word for himself – whereas a poor, servile – wretch of an old lover... she I verily believe is like to be in mortal illness as not – and vowing I shan't come near her unless I swear first that I don't care to! – and only love God. And of course I can't & won't do anything of the sort – I don't love anything but her in the whole universe – and she leads me the life to Tantalus & Prometheus Vinctus in one..."); another illustrated with a sprig of blossom written three days after her death ("...I've just heard that my poor little Rose is gone when the hawthorn blossoms go... just left the second number of Proserpine to be printed – there are many little things going to be said in it, which nobody but she would have understood... I have been long prepared so you need not be anxious about me..."); and another including a delicate drawing of moss ("...all in stars as close as that – it takes such a dreadful time to paint..."); and Thomas Carlyle discussing the use of colour in Greek sculpture ("...if colour will make Greek endurable – it will make Gothic glorious..."); others include a note to Dante Gabriel Rossetti arranging a meeting, another refusing an invitation to dine at Mr D'Israeli's, to his physician Henry Jephson, to Hale White regarding his paper on Byron and to