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    The King of the Golden River
    The King of the Golden River
    The King of the Golden River
    Ebook73 pages46 minutes

    The King of the Golden River

    By John Ruskin

    4/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1973

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    Reviews for The King of the Golden River

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      A fairytale in traditional form with two bad brothers and a good brother and a warning against greed. As a child, I thought it was all right but rather heavily didactic. I am ashamed to say I think it is the only work of Ruskin I have ever read. My father was (among other things) a real Ruskin scholar who taught him in Victorian lit classes --a student recalled his asking an exam question "What would Ruskin have thought of the new (drably utilitarian) university administration building. My mother persuaded my father to write the article on King of the Golden River for the NCTE anthology on children's literature --one of his very few published articles. (He always said anything he could write, someone else could write just as well.)
    • 3/5
      *JOHN RUSKIN, 'The King of the Golden River'

      This is the only work of fiction that the prolific and multi-talented Ruskin wrote. However, it manages to encapsulate a great many of the ideals that we think of today, when we think of Ruskin. It has the emphasis on 'Christian' mercy and charity, generosity over greed, and, to an almost distracting degree, the love of the beauties of nature. Indeed, the main 'message' of the tale is that natural bounty is what should be valued more than gold.

      The piece wraps its morals in the tale of a young boy and his two cruel and greedy brothers. When a generous act leads to the youngest brother being granted the secret of 'how to turn a river to gold,' he confides in his siblings - but their lack of charity leads to their demise; leaving the reward for the sorely put-upon but unfailingly upstanding hero.
    • 4/5
      (Read previously as part of a collection - am noting here because I only now have found out who Ruskin actually is, and I want to keep track of what I've read by him.)
    • 4/5
      While written pretty much in the style of a fairy tale---with lots more descriptions of scenery---it feels more like a lesson on the value of kindness (and physical appearance) than a fairy tale. In other words, a story meant to instruct rather than one told for the fun of it. I was disappointed. There are three brothers; the first two are mean and ugly and dark and the third is young and kind and blond and handsome.SPOILER: The brothers live in an idyllic valley, where Hans and Schwartz become filthy rich by treating their employees badly and charging excessive amounts for their crops when people are desperate and starving. Gluck's kindness is to wind and river spirits is rewarded, Hans and Schwartz turn into black stones because they fail in their quests by letting others die of thirst. We learn that holy water can become unholy if it is not used mercifully. It seems the brothers are Catholic(?) because there are holy water and good and bad priests and going to mass. The introduction, however, states that Ruskin was raised to become a minister by his Scottish parents.The introduction gives a brief biography of Ruskin. An interesting comment is made about thirty million British books destroyed in the blitz in 1941: Ruskin's other book for children was one of the first to appear in color for sixpence.
    • 5/5
      I really really liked this very short story :D

      Southwest Wind, Esquire reminds me of Gandalf, and of that witch that ask for help to the prince in The Beauty and The Beast
    • 3/5
      First written in 1842, and published in 1851, this original fairytale by the nineteenth-century art critic John Ruskin takes as its inspiration the classic folkloric trope of three brothers who all embark upon the same quest. Not surprisingly, the three meet very different fates when they attempt to take advantage of a proposition made by the magical King of the Golden River.Although similar in structure to many traditional folktales I have read, Ruskin's tale has the unmistakable flavor of the nineteenth-century morality tale, perhaps explaining why I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would... My edition of this classic original fairy tale is illustrated with color plates by Arthur Rackham, and was published in 1932.
    • 3/5
      I often don't like the early Victorian fairy tales as they are often long-winded versions of things that are best told in a fairly compressed form. I was about to give up on this one when the descriptions of the scenery got longish, but then I saw how he was using his artistic and Romantic sensibilities, and I actually found the rest of the tale quite interesting. I would have expected children to be asleep somewhere after page 2, but another review posted here says not.
    • 4/5
      The title of the first chapter is "How the Agricultural System of the Black Brothers was Interfered with by the Southwest Wind, Esquire" and so I wasn't sure how well this title would be received by Ashlyn. She loved it! She couldn't put it down and kept wanting to read more and more. I truly expected groaning or complaining and instead she said it was and awesome book. I am going to have to read it now just so I can understand why she enjoyed it so much.
    • 5/5
      A most excellent children's story, brainashing the little ones most delightfully with the idea that meanness and selfishness brings hell, and kindness brigns its own rewards. There is just NOTHING about this work not to like, but that's not surprising when you remember that RFuskin was Aereric's firt naturalist novelist
    • 3/5
      Not a bad moral tale, but the words were too uncommon for easy understanding by younger children.Gluck meekly obeys his brothers commands, is beaten by them when he doesn't, but still has a good heart. His brothers are turned to stone when they try to take shortcuts to gold and ignore pleas for help.

    Book preview

    The King of the Golden River - John Ruskin

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The King of the Golden River, by John Ruskin.

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: The King of the Golden River

    A Short Fairy Tale

    Author: John Ruskin.

    Posting Date: July 23, 2008 [EBook #701]

    Release Date: October, 1996

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER ***

    Produced by HTML version by Al Haines.

    The King of the Golden River

    by

    John Ruskin

    PREFACE

    The King of the Golden River is a delightful fairy tale told with all Ruskin's charm of style, his appreciation of mountain scenery, and with his usual insistence upon drawing a moral. None the less, it is quite unlike his other writings. All his life long his pen was busy interpreting nature and pictures and architecture, or persuading to better views those whom he believed to be in error, or arousing, with the white heat of a prophet's zeal, those whom he knew to be unawakened. There is indeed a good deal of the prophet about John Ruskin. Though essentially an interpreter with a singularly fine appreciation of beauty, no man of the nineteenth century felt more keenly that he had a mission, and none was more loyal to what he believed that mission to be.

    While still in college, what seemed a chance incident gave occasion and direction to this mission. A certain English reviewer had ridiculed the work of the artist Turner. Now Ruskin held Turner to be the greatest landscape painter the world had seen, and he immediately wrote a notable article in his defense. Slowly this article grew into a pamphlet, and the pamphlet into a book, the first volume of Modern Painters. The young man awoke to find himself famous. In the next few years four more volumes were added to Modern Painters, and the other notable series upon art, The Stones of Venice and The Seven Lamps of Architecture, were sent forth.

    Then, in 1860, when Ruskin was about forty years old, there came a great change. His heaven-born genius for making the appreciation of beauty a common possession was deflected from its true field. He had been asking himself what are the conditions that produce great art, and the answer he found declared that art cannot be separated from life, nor life from industry and industrial conditions. A civilization founded upon unrestricted competition therefore seemed to him necessarily feeble in appreciation of the beautiful, and unequal to its creation. In this way loyalty to his mission bred apparent disloyalty. Delightful discourses upon art gave way to fervid pleas for humanity. For the rest of his life he became a very earnest, if not always very wise, social reformer and a passionate pleader for what he believed to be true economic ideals.

    There is nothing of all this in The King of the Golden River. Unlike his other works, it was written merely to entertain. Scarcely that, since it was not written for publication at all, but to meet a challenge set him by a young girl.

    The circumstance is interesting. After taking his degree at Oxford, Ruskin was threatened with consumption and hurried away from the chill and damp of England to the south of Europe. After two years of fruitful travel and study he came back improved in health but not strong, and often depressed in spirit. It was at this time that the Guys, Scotch friends of his father and mother, came for a visit to his home near London, and with them their little daughter Euphemia. The coming of this beautiful, vivacious, light-hearted child opened a new chapter in Ruskin's life. Though but twelve years old,

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