Funded by a major Leverhulme Trust grant to Lancaster University, this project began in January 1997 and was completed in August 2001. The aim was to produce a scholarly edition of the first volume of Ruskin's five-volume work Modern Painters, incorporating a full collation. A preliminary study had been carried out by Professor George Landow into the suitability of Modern Painters I to function as a vehicle to exemplify some of the most interesting challenges facing the electronic critical edition. This document suggested that as a work with extensive potential for hypermedia and with an interesting history of revisions and with a partially extant MS, this volume was an ideal starting point for a project seeking to construct an innovative and experimental electronic critical edition.
It was on this basis - that an innovative and experimental electronic critical edition would be constructed - that the Leverhulme Trust agreed to fund this work. Accordingly the editor was appointed who drew up the original scope of this edition.