Forms and Fictions of Victorian Art Instruction

The Victorian period gave rise to revelatory new approaches to art instruction. A growing investment in standardized education, the rise of exhibition culture, and an expanding body of literature devoted to the teaching of art all contributed to very public and sometimes contentious debates about art pedagogy.

List of contents

• 1: Introduction: Drawing Outside the Lines


• 2: "A Temple of the Fine Arts": The Miseducation of the Victorian Art Student


• 3: "A Broken Kind of Shade": The Obscure Teachings of John Ruskin


• 4: "Lending Our Minds Out": Lessons on the Grammar of Art


• 5: "Nature's Test": The Aesthete's Guide to Practical Education


• Epilogue: "The Limit-Line": The Legacies of Victorian Art Instruction

About the author

Kimberly J. Stern is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she specializes in Victorian literature and culture. She has published an edition of Oscar Wilde's Salomé (Broadview Press, 2015) and is the author of The Social Life of Criticism: Gender, Critical Writing, and the Politics of Belonging (University of Michigan Press, 2016) and Oscar Wilde: A Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Her work has appeared in such venues as Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Review, and Prose Studies.

Product details

• Authors: Kimberly J. (Professor of English and Compa Stern, Stern Kimberly J.
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 25.12.2025
• EAN: 9780198962922
• ISBN: 978-0-19-896292-2
• No. of pages: 272
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, History, HISTORY / General, ART / History / General, EDUCATION / History, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / General, History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, Literature & literary studies, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, History of Art, History of Education, Biography, Literature and Literary studies