Fors Clavigera was the realize given by John Ruskin to a series of letters addressed to British workmen during a 1870s. They were published in the pull in of pamphlets. The letters formed factor of Ruskin's interest in moral intervention in the social issues of the day on the framework of his mentor Thomas Carlyle.
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 attempt for maximum output. One of the most effective sentences was "I throw 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". Ruskin's abusive Linguistic communication led Whistler to sue for libel. Whistler won the case, but only got one farthing in damages. Ruskin withdrew from art criticism for a period coming after or as a written of. the case.