John Ruskin was an English art critic and writer whose passionate essays shaped how Victorian Britain thought about art, architecture, and nature. He believed beauty and honest craftsmanship mattered for a healthy society, ideas that deeply influenced his friend William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. He also wrote about social and economic issues, arguing that a fair society should care for its workers — his book Unto This Last so moved a young Mahatma Gandhi that he later called it life-changing.