Peter Ackroyd

Provides an incisive portrait of William Blake that reassesses the true nature of the life and art of the enigmatic poet, painter, and engraver and places Blake and his unique, mystical art within the context of eighteenth-century thought

Blake

Poet, painter, engraver and visionary, Blake's was a radical spirit fired by genius. Yet his life has remained an enigma.In this magnificent biography Peter Ackroyd discloses the true nature of William Blake's life and art.

Emmett

"For when it is in the hope of making a priceless discovery that we desire to receive certain impressions from nature or from works of art, we have qualms lest our soul imbibe inferior impressions which might lead us to form a false estimate of the value of Beauty." - Marcel Proust, Within A Budding Grove

This was one of those 'qualms'. The strength of one's disappointment is proportioned to the beauties and delights this reader has dreamed of by reading one of Peter Ackroyd's biographies, as this reader has found in others of his such as Eliot and Turner. Because this was Ackroyd, it at least deserved that dignified turning over of the last page, but this biography of Blake does not live up to what one can conceive of as his standard quality of work. After the earlier biographies of Eliot and Pound, one has come to expect a quietly shining, erudite literary criticism, sprinkled throughout an uninterrupted but deeply thoughtful (though not always deeply researched, given the limits of his access to material at some points in time) retelling and unravelling of a poet's life. Blake's chapters follow a chronological order but feel patched together by scraps and scribbles. Certain chapters compose only of 1-2 pages that break with the preceding sections, united only by a thread of a thought, not standalone enough to warrant the interruption, in their insubstantial form these chapters makes one think 'is that it?' and 'where do we go from here?' It is somehow a less concerted, polished effort, a biographical rendering where one only sees a sketch of a thing, a skeleton, a creature partially formed whose partialness does not give us enough to glean what might have emerged from this stack of papers sewn together. It does not feel like a book that was started, shaped and finished by a single hand. Rather it feels like a book that someone had written but could not finish prior to his death. A book that was the result of scraps of notes, half-written sections, sketches of the intended design left for another to sieve through and put together in a more or less publishable state. Its rough, choppy quality isn't the work of a historian this reader recognises and has always loved.

One is better off just looking at Blake's paintings. There is more there for the eyes to see and the heart to feel. Nevermind biographical detail, Blake can convince you he is a visionary by his work alone, and that is a far more proximal, superior and accurate entry point into his beautiful drawings.