Back Cover copy
An expanded "Criticism" section presents 20 appraisals of Blake's work from his own time to the present. New to "Comments by Contemporaries" is Robert Hunt's devastating review of Blake's one-artist show in 1809, to which Blake responded with vitriolic epigrams and the creation of a major villain. "Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Perspectives," now introduced by Allen Ginsberg's personal vision of Blake, preserves earlier commentary by Northrop Frye, Martin K. Nurmi, and Harold Bloom, while adding W. J. T. Mitchell's recognition of the "Dangerous Blake," Joseph Viscomi's detective work on Blake's relief etching process Alicia Ostriker's multi-layered feminist analysis, historicist-cultural studies by Jon Mee, Saree Makdisi, and Julia Wright, and assessments of text-design permutations by Nelson Hilton, Stephen Behrendt, Morris Eaves, and V. A. De Luca.
Also included are an Introduction, a guide to Key Terms, a discussion of Textual Technicalities, a chronology of Blake's Life and Times, a Selected Bibliography, three maps, and Index of Sources, and an Index of Titles and First Lines.
About the author
John E. Grant is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Iowa. Before joining the Iowa vaculty, he taught at the University of Connecticut (1956-64). Most of his books and numerous essays consider William Blake's work as a writer and artist. He edited *Discussions of William Blake* (1961) and coedited, with David V. Erdman, *Blake's Visionary Forms Dramatic (1970), and, with Edward J. Rose and Michael J. Tolley, *Blake's Designs for Edward Young's Night Thoughts* (1980). He is the honoree of the festschrift *Prophetic Character* (2002), ed. Alexander S. Gourlay.
