Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture: Beauty for the People

Maltz, D.

This cultural study reveals the interdependence between British Aestheticism and late-Victorian social-reform movements. Following their mentor John Ruskin who believed in art's power to civilize the poor, cultural philanthropists promulgated a Religion of Beauty as they advocated practical schemes for tenement reform, university-settlement education, Sunday museum opening, and High Anglican revival. Although subject to novelist's ambivalent, even satirical, representations, missionary aesthetes nevertheless constituted an influential social network, imbuing fin-de-siecle artistic communities with political purpose and political lobbies with aesthetic sensibility.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2005-11-22

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9781403945693

DOI: 10.1057/9780230504059

Dimensions: 216cm x140cm

Pages: 290