The object of this edition is to make the Complete Works of Ruskin at last available in a uniform and self-contained series. Now that Ruskin's place as a British classic is established, his literary representatives feel that the issue of such an edition of his Works is a duty involved in the discharge of their trust.

Ruskin himself once began the republication of his Works in a connected series, but the undertaking was not congenial to him, and for various reasons was not destined to be carried out. The “Works Series” left off abruptly, before it had included any one of his three best-known works. He was in a different mind, at different times, about the manner of the republication of “Modern Painters” the “Seven Lamps” and the “Stones of Venice”. His energies were divided between revising old work and beginning new books. Hence his writings remained during his lifetime in all sorts of size and form, in various stages of completion, and often in inaccessible hiding-places.

Hitherto the Works of Ruskin, as published by Mr. Allen, consist of seventy to eighty volumes and pamphlets, varying in “format.” But the purchaser of all these works does not thereby possess himself of all Ruskin's printed writings. There remain some thirty volumes and pamphlets, which are either out of print or have been printed only for private circulation; many of them very scarce; some almost, if not quite, unobtainable.