British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870-1900: Beauty for the People

By Diana Maltz

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1349523143
• ISBN13: 9781349523146
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"