INTRODUCTION xxxiii

illustrate his own books, and the same minute pains that went to the production of the letterpress were thrown also into the plates and woodcuts. The Index to the Plates and Woodcuts introduced in this edition will show from how many places and buildings the illustrations were drawn. There was, first, the work on the spot in making careful studies and attaining the utmost exactitude. He has explained his practice in this matter in an appendix to The Two Paths, where reproductions are given of his detail-studies for the frontispiece (“Iron work of Bellinzona”) to that volume.¹ Among the MSS. of that work is some additional matter intended for the same appendix, illustrating the point further by reference to a Plate (No. 17, lower portion) and a woodcut (Fig. 18) in the present volume, both depicting two pillars in San Zeno, Verona. His drawing was founded, he explains, on a careful series of studies, and he contrasts his work with the less deliberate illustration in another book of the day.² The original drawing for the woodcut in question, with Ruskin’s notes at the time for corrections to be made by the engraver, enables us to illustrate the trouble which he took in such matters; the proof was bought by Mr. Allen, with other things of the same kind, in 1878, when Ruskin added the signature and the words at the bottom of the sheet.³ Another facsimile here given is of Ruskin’s drawing for Fig. 7 (not 9), in the present volume; it shows how carefully he drew these figures for the engravers.⁴ The same care he expected from them. His work in this matter was increased by the folio series of more elaborate plates, entitled Examples of the Architecture of Venice, which he was preparing for publication at the same time; the “Examples” are, in this edition, reproduced in the third volume of the Stones.

Steady work at home through the winter of 1850-1851 enabled Ruskin to complete the first volume, and he determined to publish it forthwith, in advance of the rest of the book, for which at that time he supposed that a second volume would suffice. The first volume might, indeed, apart from the introductory and the concluding chapter, stand by itself as an independent work; but the method of publication was probably antagonistic to its immediate success and ready sale. The volume was published on March 3, 1851; the sale of it was slow, and no second edition was called for until 1858. The Stones of Venice, in its completed form, is

¹ The frontispiece and appendix appeared only in the first edition (1859); they are reprinted from the original plates in this edition.

² G. E. Street’s Brick and Marble Architecture of Italy (1855); for another criticism of which work in the same sense, see A Joy for Ever, § 141 n.

³ Previously published (on a reduced scale) in The Strand Magazine, December 1902.

⁴ Previously published in The Strand Magazine, December 1895.

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