The John J. Reilly Center is delighted to announce the first annual John Ruskin Birthday Lecture. This series, which will be held on or about February 8 each year to mark the birthday of John Ruskin, will address the contributions the humanities can make to the most pressing issues and crises of our time.
The very first Ruskin Birthday Lecture will be given by Clive Wilmer, poet, Emeritus Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and former Master of Ruskin's Guild of St George.
Ruskin's Guild of St George: Yesterday and To-day
The Guild of St. George, founded in 1871, was born of Ruskin’s despair with modern society. It was not in any obvious way a success, partly because of Ruskin’s own psychological frailty in the 1870s and ’80s. But the Guild has survived in good health and is active in many countries at the present day, not an antiquarian body but a movement fully engaged in modern life. This lecture will seek to explore the continuities with reference to Ruskin’s writings.
The event this year is part of a larger conference, John Ruskin: Prophet of the Anthropocene.