British writer,
historian, biographer and novelist Peter Ackroyd, and
Harvard professor Leo Damrosch, have both
written studies of the poet and artist William Blake
(1757-1827). Although the two works are separated by 20 years (Ackroyd’s in
1995 and Damrosch’s in 2015), they form a cohesive understanding of Blake and
his work. Damrosch used Ackroyd’s biography in his own research, and calls it
one of the best ever written about Blake.
Blake:
A Biography is
classic Ackroyd, whom we in the United States would call a popular as opposed
to academic writer but who occupies a different position in Britain. Amateur
historian and biographer he may be, but few living writers today can equal his
output, erudition, and insight. He’s in the process of writing a multi-volume
history of England. He’s written three novels. He’s retold the stories of the
legend of King Arthur and The Canterbury
Tales. And he’s written biographies of Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Sir
Isaac Newton, Edgar Allen Poe, Geoffrey Chaucer, J.M.W. Turner and Shakespeare.
And William Blake.
Ackroyd gives us
Blake in his historical context, and “historical” is defined in its broadest
terms – historical, philosophical, literary, social, and economic.
To continue
reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak
Poetry.
Illustration: The Ancient of Days by William Blake (1794).
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