A Dream of Fair Women

The book stems from John Ruskin& 39;s experience of the years 1877 and 1878. It has been read with interest and enjoyment by a notable Ruskin scholar, a successor of his as Master of the Guild of St George. It is a novel - in which everything that is said to have been written by the real-life characters is true; and everything that they say, invented - but plausible; based on research when the characters are real, on informed imagination when they& 39;re fictitious. Ruskin is shown in artistic circles, with labouring women, with his& 39;pets& 39;, eloquently and eccentrically in the lecture theatre - and grappling naked with the Devil. And all that is true: as is his reaction to messages from the love of his life - the young, strange, and dead Rose La Touche.