For many years Ruskin has seemed, at best, a conservative thinker on gender roles. At worst, his lecture On Queens' Gardens from Sesame and Lilies was read as a locus classicus of Victorian patriarchal oppression. These essays challenge such assumptions, presenting a wide-ranging revaluation of Ruskin's place in relation to gender, and offering new perspectives on continuing debates on issues of gender - in the Victorian period, and in our own.

JOSEPH BRISTOW Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles J.B. BULLEN Professor of English, University of Reading EMILY EELLS Maître de conférences, English Department, University of Paris X, Nanterre LINDA H. PETERSON Professor of English, Yale University CATHERINE ROBSON Associate Professor of English, University of California, Davis LINDSAY SMITH Professor of English, University of Sussex SHARON ARONOFSKY WELTMAN Associate Professor of English, Louisiana State University