Description
Once the accepted story of celebrity, sex, and art had entered the public psyche it never lost its fascination. Books, plays, television series, an opera and films have all shown Effie taking her destiny in her own hands and breaking free of a repressed and repressive husband. It is an easy take on the Victorians and how we have moved on. But the story isn’t true.
In Marriage of Inconvenience Robert Brownell brings together a huge range of contemporary documents – some never seen before, some hitherto suppressed. Together they make up one of the most detailed and fascinating accounts of an historical marriage ever written – with much of it in the words of the protagonists themselves.
And perhaps most importantly of all, as the myths were propagated by enemies of Ruskin’s social and
artistic reform, this new account will give fresh understanding of Ruskin and the potency of his ideas for us today.
Illustrated with maps, documents and portraits, and with seldom-seen drawings by John Everett Millais that chart his developing relationship with Effie Ruskin.
