Ruskin, John
Ruskin, John (1819–1900),English author and artist, whose The King of the Golden River might be regarded as the first English fairy story for children. Though it was not published until 1851, seven years after Francis Paget's The Hope of the Katzekopfs, it was in fact written in 1841 for 12‐year‐old Effie Gray, whom he later married. It is a story of the three brothers of tradition, two bad, the youngest good, and their reception of a supernatural visitor, the South West Wind. Ruskin described it himself as ‘a fairly good imitation of Grimm and Dickens, mixed with some true Alpine feeling of my own’, but the South West Wind is a powerful and original character, described by Stephen Prickett as the ‘first magical personage to show that combination of kindliness and eccentric irascibility that was to appear so strongly in a...
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