British poet and scholar Clive Wilmer, who was best known for his advocacy of the work of the Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin and of the poet Thom Gunn, died March 13, the Guardian reported. He was 80. Wilmer edited the Penguin Classics edition of Ruskin's Unto This Last and Other Writings (1985) and from 2009 was master of the Guild of St. George, a national charity "for arts, craft and the rural economy" founded by Ruskin in 1871.
"Wilmer saw how John Ruskin's ideas could help make the world better," said Rachel Dickinson, who succeeded him as master of the Guild in 2019.
The other great influence on Wilmer's life was poet Gunn, whom he first met in 1964. They remained correspondents and friends until Gunn's death nearly 40 years later. Wilmer edited a selection of Gunn's essays, The Occasions of Poetry (1982), and more recently had been editing an annotated Selected Poems (2018) and, with Michael Nott and August Kleinzahler, The Letters of Thom Gunn (2022). At the time of his death, he was preparing Gunn's Collected Essays. He also edited Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Selected Poems and Translations (1991) and William Morris's News from Nowhere and Other Writings (1993).
As a translator, Wilmer focused primarily on Hungarian poetry in collaboration with fellow poet George Gömöri. Translations of poetry by György Petri, Miklós Radnóti, and János Pilinszky "showcased Clive's technical gifts and, in 2018, he received the Janus Pannonius prize for a lifetime's achievement in translation from Hungarian," the Guardian wrote.
Wilmer's first collection of poems was The Dwelling-Place (1977). His most critically acclaimed books were Of Earthly Paradise (1992), The Falls (2000), and The Mystery of Things (2008). His final collection, Architecture & Other Poems, will be published later this year.