Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera is the name John Ruskin gave to a series of letters addressed to British workmen and labourers during the 1870s, published in the form of pamphlets. They belong to Ruskin's interest in moral intervention in the social questions of his day, following the model of his mentor Thomas Carlyle, and they carry into a new form the concerns of his 1860 book Unto This Last, in which he developed a vision of moral value in sincere labour.

The title refers to three powers which, in Ruskin's view, form human destiny: Force, symbolised by the club of Hercules; Fortitude, by the key of Ulysses; and Fortune, by the nail of Lycurgus. The letters treated a range of topics chosen to communicate his moral and social vision.

Among the controversies in the series is Ruskin's attack on the paintings of James McNeill Whistler exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, which he regarded as the epitome of capitalist production in art. His abusive language led Whistler to sue for libel. Whistler won the case but received only a farthing in damages, and Ruskin withdrew from art criticism for a period afterwards.