The central concern of this paper will be to offer some account of three late nineteenth and early twentieth century ‘Ruskinian’ periodicals – the Ruskin Reading Guild Journal, its successor Igdrasil, and the Birmingham based journal St.George. The discussion of these journals will be undertaken within a wider sense of Ruskin’s long dialogue with the periodical press over the nature of an ideal ‘Ruskinian’ readership, a readership he found difficult to identify and define. Ruskin’s interest in contributing to the periodical press was driven by a wide range of motives – an opportunistic recognition of topical events that allowed him to express his views controversially and succinctly, a belief (in practice frequently confounded) that heavyweight magazines gave him access to a wide range of interested and possibly sympathetic readers, a recognition that the rhythms of serial publication suited his own working methods, and an understanding of the value of ‘niche’ readerships – such as ‘the working men and labourers’ ostensibly addressed by Fors. Ruskin’s quest for an ideal community of readers in his own writing for periodicals was, of course, never fulfilled, Nonetheless it is interesting to examine ways in which Ruskinian periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century sought to re-consider Ruskin’s ideas about reading practices and communities of readers. All three journals discussed here were keen to develop a readership that could find common interests in ‘Ruskinian’ ways of thinking about issues as diverse as education and science. What might such ways of thinking be? The reading communities built up in these magazines were inevitably based on the firmer superstructure of a variety of local Ruskin Societies, guilds and groups, but were also interested in the construction of ‘virtual’ communities through shared reading practices. This paper begins to explore the complex of associations, practices and publications through which ‘Ruskinism’ could be sustained on past the Master’s withdrawal from public life.