Ruskin and Brantwood

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Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.' Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ruskin lived in Brantwood overlooking Lake Coniston in the English Lake District, and much of his writing was done there, in the magnificent oriel tower with its circular views of the water and the grey fells.

His writing though was anything but parochial. It has been written that his work, 'Unto This Last' and Henry David Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' were two of the greatest influences on Mohandas K. Ghandi, after his faith, of course.

Ruskin never shrank from his duty; invited to speak at the inauguration of a stone edifice built with the money of a wealthy local cotton magnate, Ruskin took the oppportunity to berate the wealthy on the folly of their ways.

There is no wealth but life, he said, and he meant it.
Robert L. Fielding