British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870-1900

Download or read book British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870-1900 written by D. Maltz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-11-22 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cultural study reveals the interdependence between British Aestheticism and late-Victorian social-reform movements. Following their mentor John Ruskin who believed in art's power to civilize the poor, cultural philanthropists promulgated a Religion of Beauty as they advocated practical schemes for tenement reform, university-settlement education, Sunday museum opening, and High Anglican revival. Although subject to novelist's ambivalent, even satirical, representations, missionary aesthetes nevertheless constituted an influential social network, imbuing fin-de-siecle artistic communities with political purpose and political lobbies with aesthetic sensibility.