EDITORIAL

First, a big thanks to David Rose and the scholars in the Rose Garden for their enthusiastic reception of emerging scholars. Just when I was giving up on Ruskin studies, after being type cast and pigeonholed for doing irrelevant research, this really fantastic opportunity came along, which is allowing me to ‘indulge’ my research interests.

This is the inaugural issue of The Eighth Lamp: Ruskin Studies Today. We agreed on the name after a lot of debate. The title was used by Peter Davey in his article on the new building in the Lancaster University ten years ago. However, we felt compelled to use it again. The term ‘eighth lamp’ was used for the first time in 1851 by a reviewer of Stones of Venice, Vol. 1 by in the Dublin University Magazine, and we felt that it appropriately but subtly indicated my interest and expertise in the built environment. In addition, the title suggests an addition/revision to the Seven Lamps of Architecture. Therefore, it conveys the ‘progressive’ approach of this journal.

The Eighth Lamp is interested in re-framings and re-castings of Ruskin’s writings and teachings. While the statement of purpose states the aims and scope of this journal, I feel the need to explain the basis of those statements which emerge from my personal research interests. I am a historian, and I believe that history is a useful tool for understanding artifacts (textual or built) and events within the context of available ideas and means. However, I am also a theorist, and therefore, I also deal with atemporal and abstract concepts. I am convinced that some themes re-occur across the historical timeline, and the intellectual history of ideas and objects cannot be anything but fragmented. In any case it cannot be linear. Furthermore, I am an architect, but one who is interested in way architectural thought is generated via intersections between profession, critics, history, art, photography, and travel and tourism.

Hence, the journal looks for multidisciplinary scholarship on Ruskin that is ground breaking. It can be scholarly or it can be creative work. Furthermore, it should have the potential for challenging stereotypes as well as partial and incomplete readings of Ruskin. I feel that this is already happening in current scholarship. A shining example of this is Sharon Aronofsky Weltman’s Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science and Education (2007), which is also reviewed in this issue of The Eighth Lamp. I hope to bring similar work to your attention as often as I can. Scholars can aid by sending in abstracts or excerpts from their work.

There are some glaring gaps or slants in the content of The Eighth Lamp at the moment, for which we apologize. For instance, the only abstracts that are online are mine, and that of a colleague in Australia! I have requested other authors to send in their abstracts. The work of other Ruskin societies is under-represented and it will seem that the activity of Ruskin Programme at Lancaster University is over exposed! This is because in some cases we have had to depend only on web based information. Also, the Work in Progress, I am sure, is less than substantial. There must be many crazy PhD students slogging away at a really-hard-to-write thesis on Ruskin in some corner of the world.

It is a growing venture, and it will grow in depth and complexity with time. Hence, we invite you to participate and partake in the scholarship generated by the journal.

Dr Anuradha Chatterjee, PhD UNSW
Lecturer, Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design
University of South Australia
&
Editor, The Eighth Lamp: Ruskin Studies Today
URL: http://www.oscholars.com/RoseGarden/RoseGarden.htm
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