From Henry David Thoreau to Bill McKibben, critics and philosophers have long sought to demonstrate how a sufficient life—one without constant, environmentally damaging growth—might still be rich and satisfying. Yet one crucial episode in the history of sufficiency has been largely forgotten. Green Victorians tells the story of a circle of men and women in the English Lake District who attempted to create a new kind of economy, turning their backs on Victorian consumer society in order to live a life dependent not on material abundance and social prestige but on artful simplicity and the bonds of community.
At the center of their social experiment was the charismatic art critic and political economist John Ruskin. Albritton and Albritton Jonsson show how Ruskin’s followers turned his theory into practice in a series of ambitious local projects ranging from hand spinning and woodworking to gardening, archaeology, and pedagogy. This is a lively yet unsettling story, for there was a dark side to Ruskin’s community as well—racist thinking, paternalism, and technophobia. Richly illustrated, Green Victorians breaks new ground, connecting the ideas and practices of Ruskin’s utopian community with the problems of ethical consumption then and now.
Industry Reviews
"Green Victorians provides a welcome exploration of an important but overlooked aspect of British environmental history. A valuable addition to the recent upsurge of interest in Ruskin's sociocultural work and legacies, it also brilliantly revises the history of environmentalism, making a powerful case for tracing the roots of modern ideas on sustainability, low growth, and artisanship to John Ruskin and his lakeland disciples. This is a Victorian book for the Anthropocene."-- "Mark Frost, University of Portsmouth"
"Green Victorians traces the critique of consumer society and the fossil fuel economy to John Ruskin's circle in England's Lake District. There among the hills, the erratic, brilliant art historian and an idiosyncratic band of visionaries including London barrister Albert Fleming, the charismatic Coniston gardener Susanna Beever, and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley tried to revive handicraft production and simpler modes of life divorced from consumerism. This bracing story, eloquently told, traces the allure of the 'culture of sufficiency' and its downfall. A joy to read as well as an edgy political challenge, Green Victorians looks at the past with an eye to our future."-- "Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame"
"[A] book that will appeal to those interested in the biographies of early 'back-to-the-land' proponents and of their place in subsequent debates on environment.... The Lakelanders considered here came to display, by example, the virtues of a vast scaling down of personal and commercial demands. This advocacy was premised on older, non-utilitarian ideas of what makes for a good life. They saw Ruskin's 'intrinsic value' measure of wealth to be a surer guide to political economy than supply and demand. Their attempt to adjust the balance by means of a revival of guild and craft traditions is richly detailed in this book."
-- "Environment and History"
"Carefully argued and rich in insight, Green Victorians is a fascinating effort to build on recent, ecocritically inflected scholarship, and reconstruct the Lakeland lives of those who took Ruskin's message seriously."-- "The British Society for Literature and Science"
"In a slim volume that can be read in an afternoon, Albritton and Albritton Jonsson present the Victorian lifestyle choices of Ruskin and his followers as inspirations to help solve 21st-century problems. The book distills swathes of mostly archival research and offers lively accounts of Ruskin's circle's real experiments in a localised 'culture of sufficiency.' Ranging from Ruskin's own life to the idyllic childhood of Dora, Barbara, Ursula and Robin Collingwood, this is an account rooted in an idealised past. Yet readers are reminded throughout that we face similar challenges....The real strength of Green Victorians lies in the authors' acknowledgement that this quest for the simple life is neither straightforward nor really very simple. It is a life that requires conscious self-restraint and careful planning."-- "Times Higher Education"
"Rooted in extensive archival research, Green Victorians provides an original and refreshing examination of Ruskin's environmentalism and its influence on sustainability, conservation, and antiindustrialism among Lake District residents.... This excellent study of Ruskin and other 'Green Victorians' should offer fruitful groundwork for future efforts to theorize the relevance of Victorian environmentalism to contemporary society."-- "Environmental History"
