Diary of John Ruskin

The Diary of John Ruskin - 1861, 1862, 1863, also known as ‘MS12’ or the ‘Rock Book’, was in use between 1859 and 1863. In addition to accounts of his visits to Ireland and the Continent, the notebook contains Ruskin’s translations of Bernhard Studer’s Geologie der Schweiz (Bern: Stämpflische Verlagshandlung, 1851–53), historical notes and geological diagrams.

Ruskin’s fascination with geology began in boyhood, encouraged by his father’s purchase of a collection of mineral specimens during a visit to the Lake District from the dealer Daniel Crosthwaite (1776-1847) of Keswick. He would later say, ‘no subsequent possession has had so much influence on my life’ (LE 26 (1906)/294). As a teenager interested in maps and landscape, he would note that it is ‘geology not borders and boundaries that make a map complete’, and at Oxford, study with the geologist and paleontologist William Buckland. Well-regarded by his contemporaries, Ruskin continued to contribute to debates in geological science throughout his life, and to collect minerals: famous purchasers of his collection after his death include Sir Arthur Russell, whose collection is now in the Natural History Museum, London. In 2019, Brantwood, John Ruskin's historic home from 1872-1900, acquired his complete core geological collection.

Ruskin kept diary notebooks throughout his life. The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection includes 29 volumes, dating from 1835 to 1888. The pages contain notes, sketches, diagrams, drawings and paintings; and offer an insight into his wide-ranging interests, from art and architecture, to technology and ecology. Although portions of Ruskin's diary notebooks have been transcribed, many of the pages in the notebooks have never been published.

MS12 is a quarto-sized account book. Bound in vellum, it measures 20.4 x 17 cm and contains 262 pages. The first part of the notebook includes pages 1 to 141, containing historical and geological notes (pages 1-141). The second part of the notebook works backwards from the last page, and includes Ruskin's diary entries for the years 1861 to 1863 (pages 262-145).

Extracts from MS12 appear in the second volume of Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse's The Diaries of John Ruskin, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956–1959).

Reference no. MS12