Autograph Letter, John Ruskin and Margaret Ruskin to John James Ruskin, 15 March 1823
Autograph Letter, John Ruskin and Margaret Ruskin to John James Ruskin, 15 March 1823
Title
Untitled.
Genre
Autograph letter.
Manuscripts
Ruskin Library, Lancaster University, Lancaster, MSL 2/1.
Date
15 March 1823. For postal information, see Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 127.
Composition and Publication
First published with an omission and editorʼs punctuation in Collingwood, The Life of John Ruskin (rev. 1900), 18–19; and reprinted nearly identically (with a punctuation change) in Ruskin, Works, 1:xxvi n. ?. Edited without omission and editorial punctuation, and for the first time along with Margaret Ruskinʼs extension consisting of her own letter to John James, in Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 127–28. Partially reproduced in James S. Dearden, “The Ruskin Galleries at Bembridge School, Isle of Wight”, pl. III.
Except for the signature, which Ruskin wrote in pencil and in large capitals, his letter is in Margaretʼs hand. His salutation, letter, and signature are placed first on the sheet, followed by Margaretʼs, in which she explains the circumstances of composition:
Your boy has been very busy scrawling with a pencil on a piece of paper which he said was a letter to send to you I told him I was afraid you would not be able to make it out and he said he would read it to me if I would write it to you the above is exactly word for word what he prentended to read from his paper the signature you will see is his own sometimes he makes the letters much better he is beginning to copy from his books and will soon learn himself to write I think—
(Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 128)
Discussion
Collingwood did not include the letter in Collingwood, The Life and Work of John Ruskin (1893), so it must have lain among “the old papers and journals at Brantwood” and “letters hitherto unprinted” that “with Mr. Ruskinʼs leave, and by permission of Mr. George Allen” he was able to supply the “new biographical detail” for the revised version of the biography (Collingwood, The Life of John Ruskin [rev. 1900], v).