British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870-1900: Beauty for the People (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781403945693)

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.

Author: D. Maltz
ISBN-10: 1403945691
ISBN-13: 9781403945693
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 11/22/2005
Pages: 290
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 8.44h x 5.88w x 0.85d