Naomi Lightman
How would you define yourself?
Retired university tutor, now independent researcher.
Please describe yourself and your areas of interest.
Inspired by my tutor Rachel Trickett at Oxford University to discover Ruskin as a student, I wrote my doctorate on Ruskin's early reading from the Bible to the Romantics related to his ideas on seeing. My current concerns relate to the many -faceted lifelong influence of Shelley on Ruskin and the extensive afterlife of a chapter on the importance of seeing in a classic children's book of the 1790s on Ruskin and many Victorian children, boys and girls, whose later vocations as artists, scientists, educationalists etc, were directly inspired by its impact. My essay on the lifelong influence on Ruskin of the poet and polemicist Anna Barbauld entitled 'No Man Could Owe More' appeared in the first book of essays on this writer entitled' Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives' edited by William McCarthy [Bucknell University Press] .See also the Pre-Raphaelite Society Review of Summer 2024, my article on Pre-Raphaelite Sculptor John Lucas Tupper, 'scourge of the one-eyed'.
Why did you become a Companion of the Guild?
I want to be part of the effort to continue to present Ruskin's ideas and achievements to a wider audience.