The Nature of Gothic, a Chapter of the Stones of Venice. [With a Preface by William Morris]

Bookseller Notes

The copy of Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, the gift inscription to the flyleaf reading: 'C.R.A., Salute to a personal friendship which survives all intellectual differences - H.J.L., Jan. 1949'. In his 'Pleasure of Books' article for the National and English Review in 1954, Attlee mentions the 'high place assigned' to Morris on his shelves and refers to a few Kelmscott Press editions presented to him by 'kind friends in the Socialist movement'; the colleague in question here being Harold J. Laski - with whom Attlee, as the inscription implies, had a strained relationship in the post-War years, trading various barbs. Despite their differences, it is evident here that a respect, born of common interests, endured.The chapter of the larger work on which Ruskin placed the most importance - first published separately as a pamphlet in 1854. An early Kelmscott book, which establishes - through Morris's Preface, but principally through the testament of the book itself - Ruskin's deep influence on his own theory and praxis.