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Paperback – 197 x 130 mm – 126 pages

ISBN 9781843680604

Perhaps the most influential political essay ever written, Unto This Last was one of the defining texts of British socialism, and was a decisive experience in the lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, amongst many others.

Ruskin’s lessons are as urgently needed today as ever. His attack on the greed and short- termism of unbridled capitalism, and on the pursuit of money instead of true wealth, are every bit as inspiring and challenging as they were when Unto This Last was first published 150 years ago.

A new introduction by Andrew Hill, Associate Editor and City Editor of the Financial Times, and editor of the Lombard column, discusses the value of the essay in an age of credit crunch. A foreword by the Master of the Guild of St George, Ruskin’s association for social reform, sets out what Ruskinians today can do and are doing.

I was determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the book
Gandhi, on Unto this Last

You go down thro’ these Dismal-Science people, like a Treble-x of Senna, Glauber and Aloes [that is, powerful laxatives], like a fit of British Cholera, threatening to be fatal! I have read your paper with exhilaration, exultation, often with laughter, with bravissimo! Such a thing flung suddenly into half a million dull British heads on the same day, will do a great deal of good. I marvel in parts at the lynx-eyed sharpness of your logic, at the pincer-grip (red-hot pincers) you take of certain bloated cheeks and blown-up bellies....
Thomas Carlyle

Motley patched with apocalyptic spangles
Westminster Review

Eruptions of windy hysterics... utter imbecility... intolerable twaddle... [The author] is a perfect paragon of blubbering
Saturday Review