SOURCE: "Oeuvre and Footnote," in The Ruskin Polygon: Essays on the Imagination of John Ruskin, edited by John Dixon Hunt and Faith M. Holland, Manchester University Press, 1982, pp. 1-20.

In the following essay, Hunt examines Ruskin's tendency to footnote, cross-reference, and recast aspects of his own work.

My theme is simply how we should read Ruskin. There is, first of all, the sheer bulk of the oeuvre—not only the thirty-nine volumes of The Works, but close on as many more volumes of subsequently edited diaries, letters and other 'primary materials'. Then there is the problem of how to use all the material that Ruskin's editors, Cook and Wedderburn, crowded into their edition of the Works. Against the advice of Charles Eliot Norton, another of Ruskin's literary executors, Wedderburn argued that the Library Edition should be all Ruskin, and he and Cook accordingly included all books then available...