Shorter notice
The Life of J. M.-W. Turner, RA Walter Thornbury (Ward Lock Reprints 75s). Here is one of the great oddities of biography. When Turner died, a biography was clearly called for, but Ruskin, the obvious man to write it, declined the task. Walter Thornbury, a prolific hack, leaped in with what proved to be an enduring classic among pot-boilers. His work was greeted with horror when it first appeared in 1861. An oily style, rising at times to passages of garish purple. might have been accepted; what upset the knowledgeable was Thornbury's wanton inaccuracy and falsification (coupled with his readiness to dwell upon the painter's least attractive characteristics). 'A dreadful book!' moaned Ruskin, after he had rashly encouraged Thornbury to write it. Yet it en- joyed a kind of success and even today its powerful period aroma exercises a spell. It was republished in a one-volume second edi- tion in 1877 with certain improvements; this is the edition here reproduced. Subsequent biographers have repeatedly drawn on though modern scholars don't trust it an inch where its assertions are uncheckable.
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