000			02176nam a2200265 a 4500
001			040851
005			20231009192707.0
008			141104s1995 nycaf b 001 0beng
010			_a95227351
020			_a9780679409670
050	0	0	_aPR4146 _b.A62 1995
082	0	0	_a92 BLA
100	1		_aAckroyd, Peter _d, 1949-
245	1	0	_aBlake _b: a biography _c/ Peter Ackroyd
260			_aNew York _b: Alfred A. Knopf _c, 1995
300			_a399 p. _b: illus. _c; 24 cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 383-389) and index.
520			_aBorn in 1757, the son of a London hosier, William Blake - poet, painter, and engraver - possessed one of the most original and fertile creative geniuses of his age. Yet his strange aloofness and claims of supernatural visions caused many in his own time and since to doubt his sanity, and much of his astonishing poetry and visual art remains unfamiliar. Peter Ackroyd gives us a biography of the enigmatic eighteenth-century master, clarifying at last the true nature of Blake's extraordinary life and art. Ackroyd's narrative traces Blake's progression from his childhood in a Dissenting household, through his apprenticeship as an engraver and his studies at the newly formed Royal Academy Schools, to his full maturity, during which he produced his great masterpieces - Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Jerusalem, and Milton, to name only a few - works that were as neglected during his lifetime as they are celebrated today. Re-creating time and place as only he can, Ackroyd locates Blake in the complex context of his external world - a cross section of eighteenth-century London inflamed by various forms of radicalism, mysticism, and sexual magic, squarely opposed to the age's prevailing faith in rationalism. But he also shows us the cockney visionary as the creator of his own lavish interior world, a universe filled with angels and spirits.
600	1	0	_aBlake, William _d, 1757-1827
650		4	_aPoets, English _y-18th century _v--Biography
650		4	_aPoets, American _y-19th century _v--Biography
650		4	_aArtists _v--Biography
651			_aGreat Britain _v--Biography
942			_cMO
999			_c248235 _d248235