William blake biography peter aykroyd agent

Blake: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd - William Blake - Illustrated - Original Dust Jacket - First American Edition (normal wear, some markings.

Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, as well as a broadcaster, biographer, poet and historian.

The great biographer and novelist, now 74, shows no sign of slowing.

He cares little for the limelight, preferring to inhabit the world of the subjects of his grand biographies, notably Dickens and Blake.

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker who lived from to His work is deeply rooted in his own unique philosophy and vision of.

The great biographer and novelist, now 74, shows no sign of slowing....

A review by Ann Skea

Blake by Peter Ackroyd

$35.00 Hardcover
Knopf

Perhaps because William Blake tends to have disciples, rather than readers, most reviewers of Peter Ackroyd's new biography, Blake, have spent as much time presenting their own views as in discussing the book.

As usual, too, most have treated Ackroyd as they do all those who dare to rewrite the accepted gospels. Yet, for the first time, Ackroyd has given us a comprehensive picture of "English Blake" as the artist and engraver that he primarily was during his own lifetime.

A collection on William Blake.

And he has shown how the development of Blake's art and poetry was influenced by the work he was obliged to do in order to keep body and soul together.

Ackroyd clearly loves Blake's work. He also tries hard to understand the man himself, the society in which he lived, and the influence that his background, his training, his interests, and his friends and patrons had on his creations.

He is a painstaking and knowledgeable biographe