The letters formed part of Ruskin's interest in moral intervention in the social issues of the day on the model of his mentor Thomas Carlyle.

[1] The letters of Fors Clavigera were written on a variety of topics that Ruskin believed would help to communicate his moral and social vision as expressed in his 1860 book Unto This Last.

"[3] It was in Fors Clavigera that Ruskin published his attack on the paintings of James McNeill Whistler exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877.

He attacked them as the epitome of capitalist production in art, created with minimum effort for maximum output.

[4] One of the most powerful sentences was "I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.