Love’s Meinie collects John Ruskin’s lectures on birds, delivered at Oxford and characteristically ranging far beyond ornithology. Ruskin examines the robin, the swallow, and other birds of Greek and English tradition, weaving together close natural observation, classical mythology, etymology, and his convictions about the proper relation of art and science to nature.
As with much of his late teaching, the work resists easy classification, but it offers Ruskin at his most engaging as an observer and moralist of the natural world. It is a distinctive minor work from the great Victorian critic. This free EPUB download is cleanly formatted for any e-reader.