Clive Wilmer, who has died from a stroke aged 80, was a poet and scholar best known for his advocacy of the work of the Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin and of the poet Thom Gunn. He taught for 25 years at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where in 2012 he was made an emeritus fellow in English literature.
Clive 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. Clive built up the public awareness of Ruskin by launching engagement projects and exhibitions linked to the guild’s Ruskin Collection in Sheffield and its property, Ruskin Land, in the Wyre Forest, Worcestershire.
