William Blake “Seen in My Visions”

In 1809 the little-known artist William Blake held an exhibition of his work in a private house in Soho in the west end of London. It was not a success. The only review in the press was extremely unfavourable and few of the public came. One of those who did was the poet Charles Lamb, who later described the catalogue that accompanied the show as ‘mystical and full of vision’. It is this catalogue that this edition once more makes available. In it, the scale and range of Blake’s ambition are made plain, along with his theories on painting, his unsparing critiques of other artists and some extraordinary insights into the working of his mind. Part commentary and part manifesto, it is as radical as it is eccentric; (he claims at one point to have been transported in a ‘vision’ back to the classical world). Fully illustrated in colour with reproductions of surviving works originally in the exhibition, the book includes an essay by Martin Myrone, a leading authority on Blake and British art of the period, making it a