Isabella Viega

Please describe yourself and your areas of interest.

I am an AHRC-funded PhD Candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London, writing my dissertation on the reception of ancient Greek Sibyls in nineteenth-century literature and culture. I am also a letterpress printer and often run workshops on historical letterpress printing, typewriters, and other print-related topics. I previously undertook my doctoral studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I studied book history and served as a founding Assistant Director of Skeuomorph Press & BookLab from 2022 until 2024. Currently, I serve on the Executive Committees of the Printing Historical Society (PHS), the National Printing Heritage Committee (NPHC), and the Victorian Interdisciplinary Network (ViSION) within the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts Southeast England (CHASE). My current research charts the reception of the Sibyl and sibylline mythology in Ruskin’s works, with a particular focus on how traditions of female classical prophecy influenced his oracular voice. Ideally, I will build upon this work once I complete my PhD.

Why did you become a Companion of the Guild?

Ruskin took great pains to understand a world that misunderstood him—and, despite the profound teachings he left behind, the world still misunderstands him. Throughout my undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, I witnessed firsthand how Ruskin’s reputation has been reduced to that of a great man whose ideas were once relevant, but now painfully outdated. As other Companions will readily know, however, his ideas continue to pertain to social, political, cultural, and environmental concerns of the twenty-first century. Ruskin gave us an extensive corpus of guidebooks to envision and build a better world, but this corpus is often pre-emptively dismissed as inscrutable at its best, and problematic at its worst. Of course, as with everything else, Ruskin prophetically observed and described this phenomenon in a lecture: ‘And be sure, also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once;—nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise’ (from §13 of ‘On King’s Treasuries’). As an emergent Ruskin scholar and Companion of the Guild, I want to show readers of my generation that Ruskin is worth something, even if they will not get his meaning all at once—for, if they persist, they will be rewarded with a wisdom that penetrates into the heart of things. I hope to collaborate with other Companions to ensure that the Guild, its values, and Ruskin’s immortal truths persist into the future, beyond us all.

Email address: ivieg001@gold.ac.uk, isabella.viega@gmail.com