JOHN RUSKIN
Reading edition
Born in 1819, died in 1900; his father a wealthy wine-merchant in London; educated at Oxford; published the first volume of "Modern Painters" in 1843; made professor at Cambridge in 1858; professor at Oxford in 1869; retired to his estate on Coniston Lake in 1855; published "Lamps of Architecture" in 1849, "Stones of Venice" in 1851-53, followed by a large number of other works, including his "Autobiography" in 1887-88.