The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin and William C. McKeown (ed.) University of Toronto Press, 1,040 pp., $150.
On the 692nd page of the new edition of John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1851–53)—recently returned to print in its unabridged form for the first time since the thirty-nine-volume “Library Edition” of his complete works was issued in 1904—the great Victorian critic cuts to the chase: “I believe the architects of the last three centuries to have been wrong; wrong without exception; wrong totally, and from the foundation. This is exactly the point I have been endeavouring to prove, from the beginning of this work to the end of it.” That point, no doubt, had already been more than made: The lines quoted come after the third and final volume’s conclusion; they’re from the “explanatory note” introducing his long “Venetian Index,” an alphabetical list of buildings that finally provides something like the practical travel guide the rest of this strange book has willfully avoided.
I say “something like” because anyone hoping to use this…