INTRODUCTION TO THIS VOLUME

Summary

This volume includes The Bible of Amiens and subsidiary matter, with the lectures delivered by Ruskin during his second tenure of the Slade Professorship at Oxford. The contents are I. The Bible of Amiens (published at intervals between 1880 and 1885). II. This book on Amiens was to have been the first part of a long series of studies which, under the general title of Our Fathers have Told Us, was to have included sketches of Christian history and architecture, grouped round various local centres. Only a few other chapters were, however, written; and these form the second section of the present volume. III. The Art of England, lectures delivered at Oxford in 1883. IV. The Pleasures of England, lectures delivered at Oxford in October and November 1884, with additions (not hitherto printed) from Ruskin's MSS; and lastly, V. reports of Ruskin's Final Lectures at Oxford, delivered in November and December 1884. The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, two lectures delivered in London in February 1884, is, for reasons of space, held over for the next volume.

The contents of the present volume thus cover Ruskin's work during the years 1880–1884. In preceding volumes in this edition (XXVI.–XXXII.) the chronological order has sometimes been superseded in favour of connected topics; for Vols. XXVI.–XXXI. include the completion (at later dates) of books begun in earlier years, while Vol. XXXII. contains matter (also of a later date) closely allied in purpose to its predecessor.