William Blake

by William Blake

Regarded by a contemporary as a "brilliant eccentric whose works skirted the outer fringes of English art and literature," William Blake is today recognized as a major poet and artist. This collection of carefully chosen poems reveals the lyricism, mystical vision and consummate craftsmanship that have earned the poet his preeminent place with both critics and the general public. William Blake was an engraver, painter and visionary mystic as well as one of the most revolutionary of the Romantic poets. His writing attracted the astonished admiration of authors as diverse as Wordsworth, Ruskin, W.B.Yeats, and more recently beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the 'flower power' generation. He is one of England's most original artists whose works aim to liberate imaginative energies and subvert 'the mind-forged manacles' of restriction.

88 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1978

About the author

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.

Blake's prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the language". His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced." Although he only once travelled any further than a day's walk outside London over the course of his life, his creative vision engendered a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced 'imagination' as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".

Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical and mystical currents that underlie his work. His work has been characterized as part of the Romantic movement, or even "Pre-Romantic", for its largely having appeared in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the established Church, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Emanuel Swedenborg.

Despite these known influences, the originality and singularity of Blake's work make it difficult to classify. One 19th century scholar characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary", "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."

Reviews

[Laemeur · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy introductory text to the work of Blake. Vaughn's short essay/bio is concise without being cursory, and the captions for the plates are informative, insightful, and accessible. The selection of plates is good, as is their reproduction quality, although with a selection of only 40 plates with which to represent Blake's oeuvre, I would have left-out a few of the unfinished pieces for Dante's Commedia and included other work.