Table of Contents:
Introductory Essay
Division I: William Blake
Division II: William Blake’s Circle
Banks, Joseph
Banks, Thomas
Boydell, John
Constable, John
Cosway, Richard
Cowper, William
Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition
Cumberland, George
Cunningham, Allan
Darwin, Erasmus
Flaxman, John
Hayley, William
Hervey, James
Hogarth, William
Howard, John
Hunter, William
Kauffman, Angelica
Macpherson, James
Mortimer, John Hamilton
Palmer, Samuel
Priestley, Joseph
Pughe, William Owen
Reynolds, Joshua
Robinson, Henry Crabb
Royal Academy of Arts
Sandby, Paul
Sibly, Ebenezer, and Manoah Sibly
Stedman, John Gabriel
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Taylor, Thomas
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim
Wollstonecraft, Mary
Introductory Essay
My deep thanks as always to my kind and generous collaborators, whose contributions reveal William Blake’s truly global reach. As will be seen, this was a central concern of much of the scholarship produced over the last year. They have provided the annotations to entries from their respective areas.
Thanks also to Joseph Viscomi and Jason Whittaker for their assistance in elucidating their work; to the editors of Blake for their assistance in finding material; and to Sarah Jones for her editorial assistance and general expertise.
Blake Discoveries
Outside of the numerous studies that trace in detail the many unrecorded lines of Blake’s reception, the major factual discoveries of the past year emanate largely from Joseph Viscomi’s William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings and its two appendices; the latter are accessible from the Related Sites page of the Blake Archive.
Editions, Translations, and Catalogues
The Blake Archive offered several new editions of Blake’s work in 2021. In terms of his literary works, the most significant publication was the archive’s first copy of Poetical Sketches (1783), a typeset collection of juvenilia. The edition contains a diplomatic transcription of the text, as well as editorial notes that reference Blake’s sometimes contradictory corrections and emendations. (For more on this point, see Meaghan Green at Hell’s Printing Press.) From the illuminated books, the archive published posthumously printed copies of America (N, P, and Q) and Europe (I, L, and M).Catherine Blake printed and colored America copies N and Q and Europe copies I and L (an anonymous colorist later made additions to America Q and Europe L), while Frederick Tatham printed America P and Europe M. From Blake’s visual designs, it published the watercolor illustrations to John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, most of which were probably colored and/or finished by Catherine Blake. Finally, in its new “Works in Preview” wing, the archive has made available major paintings and drawings associated with the Last Judgment and selected paintings from the 1809 exhibition, such as Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the Nine and Twenty Pilgrims on Their Journey to Canterbury.
New Blake translations published in 2021 include Javier Calvo’s Spanish translation of Blake’s prose, which attempts to offer a kind of biography; Haruna Ikezawa and Natsuki Ikezawa’s Japanese translation of and commentary on the Songs of Innocence; an Italian edition of A Descriptive Catalogue; and the late Dmitrii Smirnov’s edition of Milton, which is the first Russian translation of the poem and contains reproductions, commentary, and a dictionary of Blake’s concepts and terms. (In his article in Russian, D. Kozyrev compares different translations of “The Fly,” while Eliza Borkowska and Camila Oliveira’s presentation at the Blake Society reflects on the difficulty of translating Jerusalem.)
Jacques Darras’s French translation of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and other works and Alain Suied’s edition of Songs were published before 2021, but are recorded here for the first time.
Digital Resources
I have attempted to document material intentionally produced for the digital environment, including webpages, blogs, videos posted on YouTube or other sites, podcasts, and other digital projects, but not references on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, or Reddit. A website that offers multiple articles related to Blake can be found under its title or the name of the host organization (e.g., the Blake Society) or the last name of the major contributor or editor (e.g., Keri Davies for Index Rerum, Jason Whittaker for Zoamorphosis). A single entry on Blake at a blog or website is listed by the author’s last name, if given. Books (monographs, collections of essays, or chapters within either) and articles in newspapers or scholarly journals are listed in Criticism, Biography, and Reviews, but I have also cross-listed in that category significant scholarship produced in the digital environment.
One of the few positive consequences of the pandemic has been the dramatic increase in digitally available presentations and conferences that can be attended through Zoom and viewed subsequently on YouTube. I have done my best, then, to note these and other videos tied to Blake that were posted over the last year, with the exception of videos reciting particular poems or explicating them for students (these seem to have proliferated with the increase in distance learning). Interpretative works, like Alex Robinson’s animated version of “London” from 2012, have been listed, however.
I have also documented presentations by or interviews with authors that were conducted on podcasts and/or posted to YouTube, and I have cross-listed them with the related works. This material includes talks by and interviews with John Higgs in relationship to his new book, William Blake vs. the World; those with Jason Whittaker about Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake; and an interview with Martin Myrone about his Lives of William Blake.
Outside of this material, the most significant talks available on YouTube are the monthly events of the Blake Society, which typically feature a Blake scholar or an artist inspired by Blake, and “Blake Now,” a discussion by five contemporary poets, which was organized by St. James’s, Piccadilly, and the Poetry Society.
Jason Whittaker launched a redesigned version of his website, Zoamorphosis, in late 2021/early 2022. In addition to continuing its work of recording sightings of Blake in popular culture and offering reviews of creative and scholarly works, the site links to Vala, the new journal of the Blake Society, now in its second issue, and to Whittaker’s YouTube channel, Zoavision, which contains both longer videos and short talks called “Blake Bites”; offers Whittaker’s biography of Blake, Divine Images; and hosts videos and related material from Global Blake, the January 2022 virtual conference. Organized by Whittaker and Sibylle Erle, the conference featured no fewer than five keynote speakers and thirty-seven presentations that examined Blake’s reception in a multitude of contexts. As Whittaker and Erle lay out in their discussion with the keynote speakers, “Global Blake: Round Table,” the event was a sequel of sorts to Erle and Morton D. Paley’s two-volume collection, The Reception of William Blake in Europe, and has a companion piece in the special issue of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, “Blake in Europe.” The conference will lead, the organizers hope, to new work on Blake’s reception. (To that end, I have included it in the 2021 checklist, even though it occurred in 2022.)
For its part, the Blake Archive expanded into new areas as well in 2021, launching, as noted above, a wing called “Works in Preview.” It presents visual designs before all the editorial and coding work has been completed, but users will still be able to enlarge images, access editorial notes and work information, and utilize the Lightbox. The archive’s new exhibition, William Blake’s Biblical Illustrations, differs significantly from the three preceding ones in that it offers short essays by different scholars, with links to images from both within and without the archive.
At Hell’s Printing Press, the blog of the Blake Archive and Blake Quarterly, Meaghan Green reflects on the problem of how to represent Blake’s corrections in Poetical Sketches when they do not agree in all copies; Ada Wofford has a post on Allen Ginsberg and another on the artist Melanie Smith; and Julian S. Whitney analyzes the Blakean imagery in the video game Devil May Cry 5. Two new YouTube tutorials were posted, addressing what is available through the archive’s preview mode and the copy information tab.
Significant scholarship on other blogs includes Sibylle Erle on the Visionary Heads at the BARS Blog; Keri Davies on Blake’s cat, Benjamin Heath Malkin, Blake’s cottage, and the title page of Milton at Index Rerum; Pete Yeo on using Blake to envision our possible relationships to the environment at Finding Blake; and Caroline Anjali Ritchie’s interviews with poets and artists at Zoamorphosis.
Blake was referenced on two blogs in Russian. The poet Alexander Del'finov expresses how he translated “London” for Leonid Fedorov’s musical project Blake, while Kristina Manucharyan notes Sarah Burton’s tribute to Blake in the recent Alexander McQueen collection of fashion designs. On the Spanish-language website Portal de Historia de la Traducción en España, Cristina Flores documents the history of translations of Blake into Spanish.
Blake Scholarship
Despite the travails of the global pandemic, Blake scholars have proven themselves to be indefatigable, with eight monographs published in 2021. The most significant is Joseph Viscomi’s William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings, which provides the new standard account of how the “printing paintings” (the color-printed drawings, or monoprints) were produced and how the works should be interpreted. Key arguments are that the “printed paintings” should be recognized as a technical innovation on a par with the relief-etching method of the illuminated books, and that the monoprints were created as autonomous designs, are independent of the illuminated books, and have no intended viewing order. Importantly, Viscomi also illustrates the relationship between the printed paintings and Blake’s evolving concept of fresco.
In the two appendices, which are not in the book itself but available online, Viscomi develops in detail both how Blake understood the term “fresco” and how the printed paintings circulated among collectors and dealers after his death. The former sheds much light on the 1809 exhibition and what Blake was attempting to do in his experimental pictures, while the latter provides new information about Frederick Tatham (including a 5 Nov. 1862 unpublished letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti), the printseller and publisher Joseph Hogarth, and John Ruskin.
Viscomi’s approach to Blake’s works from the perspective of the studio, and within their historical and technical contexts, is also apparent in a new article that reads Blake’s 9 June 1818 letter to Dawson Turner in great detail, using it to flesh out a pivotal period in Blake’s life and to explore Blake’s relationship to patronage and the marketplace. Ultimately, Viscomi suggests that both color printing and “monoprinting [had fallen] into disfavor with Blake” by this time, and that he sought, instead, to return to illuminated printing. As was the case with Blake and the Idea of the Book, the implications of Viscomi’s scholarship will resonate for years to come. (In terms of Blake and the marketplace, Denise M. Vultee, Todd H. Chiles, and Sara R. S. T. A. Elias use Blake to “provide fresh insights into the creative process of entrepreneuring” [abstract]).
Lucy Cogan’s Blake and the Failure of Prophecy is an innovative look at the much-examined idea of prophecy in Blake, stressing how his claims of prophecy were rooted in the trauma spurred by the failures of the French Revolution. Her original argument is that the early Blake was full of prophetic confidence, while the later Blake’s more explicit prophetic modes were grounded in uncertainties. (Cogan answers five questions about her book at the BARS Blog.)
Similar to Cogan’s reappraisal of prophecy, two books on Blake and science revisit well-established topics in new ways. Joseph Fletcher’s William Blake as Natural Philosopher, 1788–1795 examines Blake’s relationship to science and philosophy in his early illuminated books, making the case that he was a pantheist who rejected vitalism. Fletcher discusses Platonism, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Priestley, and Darwin to suggest that Blake’s critique of their thought was ultimately tied to their dualism. Joshua Schouten de Jel’s Blake and Lucretius: The Atomistic Materialism of the Selfhood revisits an older idea of science, looking more carefully at the reception of Lucretius and Epicurean thought and its association with figures such as Bacon, Newton, and Locke. (Science is also a key topic in Rosalind Powell’s Perception and Analogy: Poetry, Science, and Religion in the Eighteenth Century, which contains a section on Blake and Edward Young, while the print culture of mathematics is important in Sarah Haggarty’s revisionary article on the Newton print, which references Blake’s reputed argument with the Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor over geometry.)
Marsha Keith Schuchard’s A Concatenation of Conspiracies: “Irish” William Blake and Illuminist Freemasonry in 1798 positions Blake in a “radical Irish-international Masonic context” (8), which encompasses, inter alia, the anti-Jacobin controversies of the late 1790s, the “Ancient” and “Modern” branches of freemasonry (10), the Illuminés of Avignon, the London Corresponding Society, politically radical Swedenborgians, and Irish radicals, like Francis Dobbs and William Drennan. Schuchard ties these figures and groups not only to Blake, but also to members of his circle, such as George Cumberland, Richard Cosway, and Thomas Stothard. For all this sometimes dizzying array of connections, Schuchard ultimately and importantly argues that Ireland was far more central to Blake’s millenarian and radical vision than is typically thought.
Aimed at a popular audience, John Higgs’s William Blake vs. the World is an interesting explication of Blake’s ideas that avoids simply summarizing his works. Instead, Higgs analyzes different aspects of his thought, often tying them to contemporary concerns or discoveries. In many ways, the book’s title is a misnomer, then, since Higgs is continuing the thesis of his last work—William Blake Now—that the world needs Blake more than ever, a case he eloquently makes in his many talks and interviews related to the book.
Jason Whittaker’s Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake is a biography intended for a popular audience. It is the best of its kind, and it excels at synthesizing Blake’s complex ideas and historical contexts for the uninitiated (or for the classroom). While it breaks no new ground in its facts, it spends much more time than other popular biographies on Blake’s career as a visual artist, so that readers come away with a better sense of where Blake placed his energies and what his accomplishments were in the visual arts. Given Whittaker’s past work, it is not surprising that the closing chapter on Blake’s reception (largely in the Anglo-American context) is particularly rich.
Vera Serdechnaia’s book Uil'yam Bleik v russkoi kul'ture (1834–2020) [William Blake in Russian Culture (1834–2020)] is a major study of Blake’s reception in Russia, encompassing criticism, literature, music, and translation. Her examples include many modernist Russian poets, the composers Dmitrii Smirnov and Leonid Fedorov, and forgotten and newly discovered translations. The book represents just one aspect of Serdechnaia’s prolific work on this topic. Her articles in Russian consider Smirnov, the poet Andrei Tavrov, Blake as a Romantic poet, and Blake’s reception in the post-Soviet period and in the twenty-first century. Her work in English includes an article in Blake on Nikolai Gumilyov and “The Mental Traveller,” and her Global Blake presentation on Smirnov, Tavrov, and the composer and director Alexander Belousov.
Three collections of essays on Blake appeared in 2021, though none was in book form. In the Blake Archive’s exhibition, six essays on the biblical illustrations grew out of a list compiled by Sheila A. Spector. Jared N. Powell discusses the influence of Westminster Abbey on the works that illustrate the Bible; Jennifer Davis Michael highlights how Blake drew on apocryphal accounts of Jesus; Naomi Billingsley examines the portrayal of Jesus’s ministry in the Butts designs; Sarah Jones traces the evolution of the plate numbered 13 in Illustrations of the Book of Job; Spector considers how Blake’s paintings reveal his esoteric readings of the Bible, thus providing a very useful corollary to her 2020 book, The Evolution of Blake’s Myth; and Kendall DeBoer examines Blake’s depiction of women. (Other significant work on religion includes Christopher Z. Hobson on Blake’s relationship to John Wesley’s notion of “Christian perfection”; Christopher Rowland’s essays on Blake in relationship to New Testament prophecy and on Blake as a leitourgos, a New Testament term for a public minister; and Silvia Riccardi’s examination of the color and lines of the Dante illustrations for their aesthetic and spiritual significance for Blake.)
Contributors to the second issue of the Blake Society’s journal, Vala, which is edited by Sibylle Erle, “were asked to think about ‘invisible women’ and gender in Blake” (5). The result is many thoughtful articles and creative works. To name just a few, Helen P. Bruder’s essay on male blindness within Blake’s work and Blake criticism is a good overview of what feminism and queer studies have brought to Blake, and it contains a reflection on Bruder’s own career. Similarly, Cecilia Marchetto highlights invisible women both in Blake and in the academy. Distilling a central point of her book Blake, Sexuality and Bourgeois Politeness (2011), Susan Matthews asks how we can understand “gender in a poet and artist born in the mid-eighteenth century” (63). Both Jodie Marley and Elizabeth Effinger reflect on Blake and COVID, with Amy Weldon pondering how to teach when the world seems to be falling apart. Susanne Sklar, Harriet Stubbs, Sharon Choe, Caroline Anjali Ritchie, and Annise Rogers all consider female characters or the presentation of women in the illuminated and prophetic books. Louisa Albani, the author and illustrator of William Blake’s Mystic Map of London, offers three paintings that depict Catherine Blake working alongside William, and John Riordan shows, in comic-strip form, Catherine reflecting on her life. (Elsewhere, Lucy Cogan has a thought-provoking essay on how and why Blake represented rape, and Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys examines Visions of the Daughters of Albion through the lens of female embodiment.)
The last collection of essays appeared in a special issue of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, which was also edited by Sibylle Erle. It contains eight articles on Blake’s reception in Europe, in addition to Erle’s useful introduction on both Blake’s reception and the wider theory and practice of reception studies. Some of the essays build on chapters published in Erle and Paley’s The Reception of William Blake in Europe or relate to presentations delivered at Whittaker and Erle’s Global Blake conference. In addition to Serdechnaia’s essay on Gumilyov, mentioned above, Cătălin Ghiță examines the 2016 Romanian radio play Biblia neagră a lui William Blake [William Blake’s Black Bible]; Eliza Borkowska considers Czesław Miłosz’s Ziemia Ulro [The Land of Ulro] and Miłosz’s difficulties in translating Blake; Luisa Calè reads Corrado Costa’s Italian graphic novel William Blake in Beulah; Tanja Bakić considers Blake’s influence on one Croatian and two Serbian artists; Cristina Flores examines Blakean motifs in the Spanish poet Leopoldo María Panero; Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa, Cláudia Franco Souza, and João Carlos Callixto compare the Blakean influence on the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and on a rock band, Três Tristes Tigres; and Erle herself considers Blake’s influence on the German painter Ludwig Meidner and critical discussions surrounding him.
In addition to that issue of the Blake Quarterly, the Global Blake conference, and Serdechnaia’s book and articles, there were many other works that discuss Blake’s reception or his relationship to other figures. In English, Emilia Halton-Hernandez writes on Blake and the British psychoanalyst Marion Milner; Francesca Cauchi examines Blake, Nietzsche, and the Moral Law; and the Iranian scholar Muhammad Hussein Oroskhan compares Blake and the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez-e Shirazi. In Japanese, Hikari Sato considers the influence of Blake on the Japanese philosopher and artist Muneyoshi Yanagi and the Japanese Folk Craft movement, while Masahiro Sakamoto analyzes how Blake inspired Masaharu Maehara. Hanjin Yan examines what Zhou Zuoren’s translations of Blake’s poetry on love and sexuality suggest about reforming the relationship between the sexes. In Portuguese, Andrio J. R. dos Santos considers Blake and Anne Rice, the late author of Interview with the Vampire, and in Spanish, Jaime Puig Guisado compares Blake and the Spanish poet and Nobel Prize winner Juan Ramón Jiménez.
Apart from reception studies, there are two chapters on Blake in Tobias Churton’s The Lost Pillars of Enoch: When Science and Religion Were One, which offers a history of (and a plea for) esoteric thought and spiritual practices. The first examines the antiquarian William Stukeley and his influence on Blake, with references to Isaac Newton, while the second explicates Blake’s hermetic thought and offers a close reading of All Religions are One. In Romanticism and the Rule of Law: Coleridge, Blake, and the Autonomous Reader, Mark L. Barr has two chapters that together consider Blake’s ideas of law and subjectivity between The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem. In his study Oriental Wells: The Early Romantic Poets and Their Eastern Muse, Md. Monirul Islam devotes a chapter to Blake and his views of Hinduism, India, Islam, and Muhammad. Philip Smallwood revisits Blake’s relationship to Augustan poetry, while Isabela Ferreira Loures makes the case that Blake’s work was “a turning point in early modern aesthetics.”
Body, affect, and cognition are considered in Haram Lee’s article on biopolitics in The Four Zoas and in Richard C. Sha’s reading of “London” through the idea of distributed cognition in a collection of essays on the topic. Mark Lussier examines the physical consequences of “rhythmic operations” in Blake, Byron, and Percy Shelley. Richard Ness’s dissertation on the ecological implication of experimental meters contains a chapter on Milton. Jacob Henry Leveton, whose dissertation is also on Blake and the environment, published an article on how pollination in The Book of Thel offers an alternative model to that in Adam Smith’s theory of political economy.
Passings
In Vala, Josephine A. McQuail offers an overdue remembrance of the Canadian Blake and Yeats scholar Rachel V. Billigheimer, who passed away in 2013. Billigheimer was the author of Wheels of Eternity: A Comparative Study of William Blake and William Butler Yeats (1990), and McQuail records her other significant work. At Hell’s Printing Press and in the Blake Quarterly, Morton D. Paley remembers Bo Ossian Lindberg, who contributed plate-by-plate commentary on Illustrations of the Book of Job to the 1987 Blake Trust edition. At Zoamorphosis, Jason Whittaker notes the passing of the Beat poet and proprietor of the City Lights Bookstore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
In work on Blake scholars, Michael Kirwan reflects on Fearful Symmetry and Frye’s reading of Blake, an issue also at stake in R. Paul Yoder’s review of Sheila A. Spector’s The Evolution of Blake’s Myth. A French article by Michèle Duclos seeks to explicate what Kathleen Raine meant when she identified herself as a symbolist.
Blakeana
The viol consort Parthenia and the Morgan Library and Museum held an event titled “‘Exuberance is Beauty’: William Blake, the Viol, and the Book” on 17 February 2021. It included “an introduction to the Morgan’s exceptional holdings of Blake’s illuminated printing,” a performance of Will Ayton’s A Reliquary for William Blake, and a discussion with the Morgan curators and the performers.
Five dissertations completed in 2021 had at least a chapter on Blake.
Blake’s Circle
This year I have added to the traditional listings of Blake’s Circle a category titled “Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition” in order to capture studies of Blake’s artistic milieu, which are not easily reducible to an individual person or an institution. For example, Cora Gilroy-Ware’s The Classical Body in Romantic Britain examines how the classical body was conceived and displayed in the Romantic era. Blake and many members of his circle are referenced throughout, but Thomas Banks and John Flaxman are considered at length in their own chapters. I also list here Jennifer Germann’s essay examining how Black women were depicted in visual art; Catherine Roach on the exhibiting of race; Susan Jenkins on public monuments in Westminster Abbey in 1798; T. C. Lee’s essay comparing the teaching of anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts (London) and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts (Dublin); Paris Amanda Spies-Gans’s essay documenting women who displayed their art in London or Paris; Molly Farrell’s reading of Cowper’s “Verses Subjoined to the Bill of Mortality of Northampton”; and Nicholas Robbins’s study of new visual representations of climate in the Romantic era.
In addition to figuring significantly in both Gilroy-Ware and Jenkins, Flaxman is the subject of José Luis Pellicer Mor’s article in Spanish that considers his revision of the Homeric epic, while Matthew Greg Sullivan’s essay on Allan Cunningham’s use of the anecdote discusses Maria Denman’s “Brief Memoir” of Flaxman. Also in Spanish, Daniela Picón examines the reception of Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s La Araucana in Robert Southey and William Hayley.
Peter McNeil’s book Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World (2018) contains extended sections on Joseph Banks and Richard Cosway and their portrayal as macaronis, along with many less developed references to members of Blake’s circle. Two articles consider works related to John Boydell’s Shakspeare Gallery, including two rediscovered paintings by Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759–1817) for The Taming of the Shrew. John Howard, the prison reformer, is the subject of two essays, one of which focuses on his public image and the other on the tension between his assertions of a common humanity with prisoners and his patrician benevolence. The influence of Swedenborg on Kant (or lack thereof) is also considered in a pair of essays.
While Hogarth has not traditionally been included as a member of Blake’s circle, two major works published in 2021 deserve notice. Caroline Patey, Cynthia E. Roman, and Georges Letissier’s Enduring Presence: William Hogarth’s British and European Afterlives is a two-volume collection of essays on Hogarth’s reception, complementing much of the work done recently on Blake. Alice Insley and Martin Myrone’s Hogarth and Europe is the catalogue for the Tate Britain exhibition with the same title, held from 3 November 2021 to 20 March 2022. The catalogue contains many chapters connecting Hogarth to different European cities or examining his imagery in different geographic contexts. Separate articles consider the sociologies of Hogarth’s art and his depiction of Bedlam.
Bettina Baumgärtel’s Angelica Kauffman is another catalogue worth examining; it was for the exhibition at the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf from 30 January to 20 September 2020. The exhibition was originally scheduled to be shown at the Royal Academy from 28 June to 20 September 2020, but it was canceled because of COVID. In addition to its reproductions, the catalogue includes essays on Kauffman’s contemporary reputation; her design for the ceiling at Somerset House; her friendship with Antonio Canova; and an overview of her work, method, and technologies. In an article elsewhere, Amanda Vickery considers Kauffman’s eighteenth-century reputation.
Work on Wollstonecraft in 2021 was quite substantial. Zoya Shunina published two articles in Russian, one containing a translation of a letter from Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay and the other considering her Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. In a discovery that adds to the understanding of Wollstonecraft’s transatlantic influence and may resonate in subsequent readings of Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Eileen Hunt Botting has found that an excerpt from A Vindication of the Rights of Men, calling for the abolition of slavery, was published in a Jamaican paper in February 1791, shortly before the Haitian Revolution. Articles by Samantha Botz and Catherine Packham revisit A Vindication of the Rights of Men as a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections. Sylvana Tomaselli’s book Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics lucidly distills Wollstonecraft’s thought in relationship to her biography and context. Mark Philp’s Radical Conduct: Politics, Sociability and Equality in London, 1789–1815 considers political radicalism in the Romantic era (largely in the Godwin-Wollstonecraft circle) from the perspective of conduct and the relationship of the private and the public. Karen Green makes the case that modern notions of human rights are rooted and defined in eighteenth-century arguments for women’s rights. Intentionally misreading Thomas Taylor’s parody of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman—A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (1792)—S. Marek Muller contends that the work lays out key arguments for animal rights. In a study of Wollstonecraft’s statements on air, Rowan Boyson argues that “air was both a metaphor for freedom and also a literal condition for its development” (abstract). Sandra Sokowski compares Wollstonecraft’s novel Maria: Or, the Wrongs of Woman with Denis Diderot’s The Nun. Finally, Wollstonecraft’s influence on the late Romantic feminist and Owenite Anna Doyle Wheeler is considered by Ophélie Siméon.
Symbols
| § |
Works preceded by a section mark are reported on secondhand authority. |
Abbreviations
Division I: William Blake
Part I: Blake’s Writings
Section A: Original Editions, Facsimiles, Reprints, and Translations
America a Prophecy (1793)
America a Prophecy [N]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
America a Prophecy [P]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
America a Prophecy [Q]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
A Descriptive Catalogue (1809)
§ I miei quadri. William Blake. Madrid: Casimiro, 2021. 96 pp. ISBN: 9788417930936. In Italian. Illustrated with the extant works presented by Blake in his 1809–10 exhibition above his brother’s shop in Soho.
Europe a Prophecy (1794)
Europe a Prophecy [I]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
Europe a Prophecy [L]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
Europe a Prophecy [M]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–93?)
Le Mariage du Ciel et de l’Enfer. Trans. Alain Suied. Paris: Arfuyen, 1996. ISBN: 9782908825497. In French and English. <WBHC p. 296> See Section B for Suied’s translation of Marriage with other works by Blake.
El matrimonio del cielo y el infierno [H]. Ed. and trans. Fernando Castanedo. 2002, 2007, 2010, 2012 (4th ed., revised), 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. In Spanish, with facing English for Marriage. <Blake (2003, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021)> J. 10th ed., 2021.
Le Mariage du Ciel et de l’Enfer. Ed. and trans. Jacques Darras. Paris: Gallimard, 2018. Collection Papeterie, Les carnets carrés. 18 x 14 cm. 208 pp. ISBN: 3260050891950. In French and English. See Section B for Darras’s translation of Marriage with other works by Blake.
Milton a Poem (c. 1804–11)
Mil'ton/Milton. Trans. Dmitrii Smirnov(-Sadovskii). Moscow: Magreb, 2021. ISBN: 9785950049897. In Russian and English. Dmitrii Smirnov (1948–2020), a poet and composer, was one of the best translators of Blake into Russian. This bilingual edition contains the first translation of Milton into Russian, along with its original text, some plates, a substantial commentary, and a dictionary of Blake’s concepts.
Poetical Sketches (1783; composed c. 1769–77)
Poetical Sketches [C]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021. This is the copy that was owned by Charles Augustus Tulk.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
Chants d’Innocence et d’Expérience. Trans. Marie-Louise Soupault and Philippe Soupault. Toulouse: Éditions Les Cahiers Libres, 1927. B. Paris: Éditions Charlot, 1947. Collection “poésie et théâtre.” <WBHC p. 407> C. Bilingual edition with a preface by Sylvie Doizelet. Paris: Éditions La Table Ronde, 2007. Collection Quai Voltaire. 19 x 11.5 cm. 160 pp. ISBN: 9782710329541. D. Prologue by Jean-Yves Masson. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2021. 19.2 x 12.6 cm. 134 pp. ISBN: 9782251452104. Reproduces in full copy Z of Songs (1826; Library of Congress). In French, with Blake’s plates on facing pages.
Les Chants de l’Innocence et de l’Expérience. Trans. Alain Suied. Paris: Arfuyen, 2002. 22.5 x 16.5 cm. 140 pp. ISBN: 9782845900042. In French and English.
Section B: Collections and Selections
“The Chimney Sweeper” (Innocence), “London,” excerpts from Visions of the Daughters of Albion and Milton, and “Mock on Mock on Voltaire Rousseau.” Romanticism: 100 Poems. Ed. Michael Ferber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 12-16.
§ L’Évangile éternel. Trans. Alain Suied. Paris: Arfuyen, 1999. 20.5 x 13.5 cm. 80 pp. ISBN: 9782908825732. In French and English. It includes The Everlasting Gospel and also The Book of Thel.
“Introduction” (Innocence), “Introduction” (Experience), “I saw a chapel all of gold,” “The Little Black Boy,” “The Tyger,” “The Divine Image,” “Ah! Sun-Flower,” “The Clod and the Pebble,” “Never seek to tell thy love,” “The Chimney Sweeper” (Experience), and “Proverbs of Hell.” Akinori Takase. Coleridge Kenkyu (Eibun): Furoku Blake, Wordsworth Coleridge shi senshu [A Coleridge Study (English): With Selected Poems of Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge]. Okayama: Fukuro Shuppan, 2021. 109 pp. ISBN: 9784861868337. In English.
Le Mariage du Ciel et de l’Enfer, accompagné du Livre de Thel et de L’Évangile éternel. Trans. Alain Suied. Paris: Arfuyen, 2004. 172 pp. ISBN: 9782845900424. In French and English.
Le Mariage du Ciel et de l’Enfer et autres poèmes. Ed. and trans. Jacques Darras. Paris: Gallimard, 2013. Collection Poésie no. 481. 17.8 x 10.8 cm. 412 pp. ISBN: 9782070448944. In French and English.
Muku no Uta [Songs of Innocence]. Trans. Haruna Ikezawa and Natsuki Ikezawa. Tokyo: Mainichi Shimbun Shuppan, 2021. 110 pp. 3 plates (full) and 20 plates (partial) of Blake’s. ISBN: 9784620326665. In Japanese. The Innocence section of Songs of Innocence and of Experience and “The Little Vagabond,” “The School Boy,” and “The Voice of the Ancient Bard” are translated into Japanese, with commentary. In the commentary, Natsuki IkezawaNatsuki Ikezawa is a novelist and poet, also known as the editor of World Literature Collection Natsuki Ikezawa Edition (2007–11, 30 vols.) and Japanese Literature Collection Natsuki Ikezawa Edition (2014–17, 30 vols.). Haruna Ikezawa, his daughter, is a voice actress, singer, and essayist who has been the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan since 2020. succinctly mentions eighteenth-century London, the slave trade, Charles Kingsley, Christianity, R. L. Stevenson, and Charles Dickens. At the end, he briefly discusses the concept of innocence in Blake—referring to Mark Twain, J. D. Salinger, Mary McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Kenji Miyazawa, and Fyodor Dostoevsky—from the viewpoint of comparative literature.
“Nurse’s Song” [Innocence]. Bright Poems for Dark Days: An Anthology of Hope. Ed. Julie Sutherland. London: Frances Lincoln, 2021.
A Poison Tree. Trans. Kambiz Manouchehrian. Tehran: Cheshmeh Publishing, 2021. A selection of Blake’s poetry translated into Persian.
“The Tyger.” Trans. Eri Kubota. “Honyaku Griff Rhys Jones cho Igirisu Meishi Sen [A Japanese Translation of The Nation’s Favorite Poems by Griff Rhys Jones].” Ryutsu Keizai Daigaku Ronshu [Journal of Ryutsu Keizai University] 56.2 (2021): 177-85. In Japanese.
La Visión Eterna. Cartas, manifiestos y ensayos. Ed. and trans. Javier Calvo. Madrid: Editorial La Felguera, 2021. Colección Artefactos. 352 pp. ISBN: 9788412261059. In Spanish. The volume seeks to compile “Blake’s major texts in prose, in order to provide readers with the closest possible approximation to what might be a biography written by Blake himself” (20). It includes a note from the publishers and a prologue by Calvo, “Blake y la gente del futuro.” Four sections follow: “Primera parte. Lambeth y Felpham (1793–1803). Visión” (25-108); “Segunda parte. South Molton (1803–1808). Purgatorio” (109-90); “Tercera parte. Golden Square (1809). Revelación” (191-284); “Cuarta parte. Fountain Court (1810–1827). Ascensión” (285-344). The guiding line for this chronological account is found for the most part in Blake’s letters, which are translated from one of the Keynes editions (not specified), along with various material from the Notebook, A Descriptive Catalogue, Erdman’s Complete Poetry and Prose, and information drawn from biographies by Alexander Gilchrist, Arthur Symons, Mona Wilson, Kathleen Raine, and Peter Ackroyd. As Calvo himself states, it is not an academic work, and only this may explain why G. E. Bentley, Jr.’s colossal contributions to our understanding of Blake’s life are absent. Rather, the volume is an expressionist portrait, beginning somewhat late (in 1793), that essentially coincides with pop culture’s image of Blake as maudit (the poet’s was “a voice drenched with bitterness”).
William Blake: Selected Works. Ed. Peter Otto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. <Blake (2019, 2021)>
Review
Womersley, David. “
Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.”
SEL 60.3 (2020): 597-645 (Blake section 602-05). “An attractive, generous, and useful volume, and better than any rival selection of Blake’s poetry” (602).
Part II: Reproductions of Drawings and Paintings
Section A: Illustrations of Individual Authors
Bunyan, John
Illustrations to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
Section B: Collections and Selections
Satan Calling Up His Legions, an Experiment Picture (c. 1799–1805) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
Satan Calling Up His Legions (c. 1800–05) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth (c. 1805) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan (c. 1805–09) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
A Vision of the Last Judgment (Pollok House) (1806) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Fall of Man (1807) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the Nine and Twenty Pilgrims on Their Journey to Canterbury (1808) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Vision of the Last Judgment (Petworth House) (1808) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Bard, from Gray (c. 1809) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Last Judgment (Ransom Center) (c. 1809) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Last Judgment (National Gallery of Art) (c. 1809) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
The Last Judgment—Tracing (c. 1809 or later) [preview mode]. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2021.
Part III: Commercial Engravings
Section A: Illustrations of Individual Authors
Blair, Robert
The Grave (1808, 1813)
§ Robert Bler. Grob. Trans. Milena Dasukidis. Smederevo, Serbia: Gavran, 2015. 122 pp. ISBN: 9788680060002. In English and Serbian.Thanks to Tanja Bakić for this information.
Review
Ivkov, Slobodan.
Fantastikologija (30 Aug. 2016). In Serbian.
Part IV: Bibliographies and Catalogues
Section A: Bibliographies
[Cross-listing articles with substantial bibliographical content]
Calè, Luisa. “Blake and Exhibitions, 2020.” See Blake 55.1 in Part VI.
Davies, Keri. “Benjamin Heath Malkin, 1769–1842: A Bio-bibliography.” See Index Rerum in Part V. A very useful chronology of Malkin’s life, combined with a list of his publications.
McQuail, Josephine A. “Rachel V. Billigheimer: Dancing toward Eternity.” See Vala in Part VI. A remembrance of the Blake and Yeats scholar, whose major work is a study of the two poets, Wheels of Eternity (1990); includes a list of her other significant work.
Paley, Morton D. “‘All his neighbourhood bewail his loss’: Bo Ossian Lindberg, 1937–2021.” See Blake 55.2 in Part VI. A remembrance of Lindberg, with a select bibliography.
Ripley, Wayne C., with Fernando Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. “William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2020.” See Blake 55.1 in Part VI.
Spector, Sheila A., with the assistance of Kendall DeBoer and Sarah Jones. “List of Biblical Illustrations.” See William Blake Archive in Part V. The list includes: “1) biblical reference; 2) title of work; 3) most commonly accepted date of composition; 4) medium; 5) major catalogue reference; 6) comments, including initial provenance; and 7) link to image in the Blake Archive if published there.”
Whittaker, Jason. “Blake and Music, 2020.” See Blake 55.1 in Part VI.
Part V: Digital Resources
Allen Ginsberg Project
The posting of the transcription and audio of Ginsberg’s 1979 course on Blake continues. The latest entry, as of 25 Jan. 2022, is “Ginsberg on Blake Continues—98.”
BBC Select. “Rapper Recites William Blake’s ‘London’ Poem/Simon Schama’s The Romantic Revolution.” YouTube. 30 Mar. 2021. Testament recites “London” and reflects on Blake.
Beacham, Frank. “William Blake, English Poet, Painter, and Printmaker, Was Born 264 Years Ago Today.” Frank Beacham’s Journal: Stories about Music, Culture, Technology, and History (28 Nov. 2021): 11 pars. An overview.
Blake Society
Diane Eagles. “The Lamb at the Gate.” 20 Jan. 2021. “A presentation by the ceramicist Diane Eagles talking about the making of The Lamb at the Gate,” a ceramic statue created from materials found in Lambeth, Felpham, and Bunhill Fields.
Jason Whittaker. “Images of the Divine in the Work of William Blake.” 17 Feb. 2021. An overview of the divine in Blake’s work, with some remarks on his new book, Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake.
Eliza Borkowska and Camila Oliveira. “Blake’s Jerusalem in Translation.” 17 Mar. 2021. Two translators of Jerusalem discuss how “Blake’s ‘English’ myth is a text of an inter/transnational character and universal application”; they also reflect on “the job of a translator of such a demanding poem.”
“The Frontispiece.” 28 Apr. 2021. A discussion among the Zoom attendees about Blake’s use of frontispieces.
Luisa Calè. “Blake and Dante.” 18 May 2021. A substantial presentation on Blake’s illustrations.
John Higgs. “William Blake vs. the World.” 16 June 2021. A presentation on his new book.
Carol Leader. “Satanic Error and the Curse of Single Vision.” 13 July 2021. On Blake’s psychological insights and application to the everyday.
Iain Sinclair. “Blake’s ‘Mental Traveller’ and The Gold Machine.” 15 Sept. 2021. Describes how “The Mental Traveller” became an unacknowledged model for the journey chronicled in his book The Gold Machine.
“Milton and the Cottage.” 20 Oct. 2021. A follow-up discussion of Blake’s frontispieces, focusing on “the frontispiece to Milton and its connection to the Cottage in Felpham.”
“The Birth of Vala II.” 28 Nov. 2021. Several contributors speak on the launch of the second issue of the Blake Society’s new journal, Vala. For its contents, see Vala in Part VI.
Brian Catling. “Avoiding Blake, Defeated by a Flea in the Ear.” 15 Dec. 2021. Artist and writer Brian Catling uses Blake to consider the sources of creativity.
British Association for Romantic Studies
British Library. “William Blake vs. the World: Why He Matters More Than Ever.” See Higgs in Part VI.
Caplan, Walker. “This Digital Humanities Project Gives Users Free Access to William Blake’s Printed Work.” Literary Hub (12 Aug. 2021): 3 pars. A brief description of the Blake Archive and Sarah Weston’s BlakeTint.
Clark, John Henry. “William Blake on the Lords [sic] Prayer.” YouTube. 15 Mar. 2021. According to the audio, the copyright of the talk is 2014.
Davies, Keri. Index Rerum: A Blog about Books, Book-Collecting, William Blake, and Lots of Other Things.
Scholarship:
“William Blake’s Cat.” 29 Mar. 2021. On Blake’s white cat in Felpham and his depictions of cats.
“Benjamin Heath Malkin, 1769–1842: A Bio-bibliography.” 26 May 2021. A very useful chronology of Malkin’s life, combined with a list of his publications.
“Blake’s Cottage at Felpham.” 5 Nov. 2021. Shows that Blake’s depiction of his cottage in Milton is modeled on Francis Tolson’s Hermathenae (1740), and suggests that for his Landscape at Felpham, Blake used a camera obscura.
“Milton: Titlepage or Frontispiece.” 21 Nov. 2021. Notes responding to the Oct. 2021 Blake Society meeting on “Milton and the Cottage,” suggesting that the title page draws on a plate in Balthazard Solvyns’s Les Hindous (Paris, 1808), which was in the library of Rebekah Bliss.
Del'finov, Alexander. “Kak ya perevodil ‘London’ Bleika [How I Translated Blake’s ‘London’].” Colta (16 Apr. 2021). In Russian. The poet Alexander Del'finov details how he translated “London” for Leonid Fedorov’s musical project Blake, and compares different translations.
Dukes, Hunter. “William Blake’s The Gates of Paradise (1787–93) [sic].” Public Domain Review (21 Apr. 2021): 5 pars. An analysis of For Children: The Gates of Paradise, with digital images from the Yale Center for British Art.
European Romanticisms in Association
Posts dated 1 June 2020 regarding items at the Cowper and Newton Museum in Olney:
Flores, Cristina. “Blake, William.” Diccionario Histórico de la Traducción en España. Portal de Historia de la Traducción en España. 13 pars. In Spanish. On the history of Blake translations into Spanish.
Forbes, Mia. “Angels in the Poetry of William Blake.” Wordsworth Editions (4 June 2021). A publisher’s blog.
Getty Museum. “William Blake’s Eccentric Arts.” See Myrone, Lives of William Blake, in Part VI.
Hanson, Marilee. “William Blake.” English History (18 Nov. 2021). A biographical sketch.
History Extra. “William Blake: ‘Artist or Genius, or Mystic, or Madman.’” See Higgs in Part VI.
How To Academy. “John Higgs—William Blake vs. the World.” See Higgs in Part VI.
Kneipp, Jessica. “‘A Cradle Song’: Beautiful Sounds from the Eternal Poem by William Blake.” Nspirement (15 June 2021). Reflections on the poem by a mother.
Literary Theory and Criticism
“Magic, COVID-19 and William Blake’s Hope.” Glitch Bottle (29 May 2021). A blog post invoking Blake to counter fears of COVID: “Let’s hear from … Wil[l]iam Blake, who became deathly ill in 1825, and continued to work on and on and on despite the illness, [b]y delving his gnostic and esoteric spade deep into what he called the realm of the Imagination.”
Manucharyan, Kristina. “Kak Sara Berton otdala dan' khudozhniku Uil'yamu Bleiku v novoi kollektsii Alexander McQueen [Sarah Burton Paid Tribute to William Blake in the New Collection of Alexander McQueen].” Vogue (22 July 2021). In Russian.
Murray-White, James. Finding Blake: Reimagining William Blake for the 21st Century.
Pete Yeo. “An Evergreen and Pleasant Land?” 17 Feb. 2021. Uses “Jerusalem” to highlight “the importance of responsibility and choice” regarding the environment.
Pete Yeo. “‘Auguries of Innocence’: The Connected and Consequential Cosmos.” 22 Mar. 2021. Might the popularity of Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” “yet still augur well for our necessary reconciliation with the web of life”?
Tamsin Rosewell. “The Tygers of Wrath—A Lesson in Dissent.” 25 Oct. 2021. “Blake’s biggest influence on my world is probably his permission. Permission to dissent? Permission to be unorthodox? Permission to challenge authority? Permission to defend others from injustice? Permission to subvert tradition?”
Ritchie, Caroline. “The Radical Imagery of William Blake.” Culture Matters (2 Mar. 2021): 15 pars. “Blake’s radical imagery—his imagery of roots—shows him to be deeply concerned with the kind of traditions and systems that need to be weeded out in order to promote real regeneration, real liberty” (par. 15).
Robinson, Alex. “‘London’—William Blake.” Vimeo. [2012].
Sack, Harald. “William Blake—Poet, Painter, Visionary.” SciHi Blog: Daily Blog on Science, Tech and Art in History (28 Nov. 2021). An overview on Blake’s birthday.
St. James’s, Piccadilly. “Blake Now.” Five poets (Sophie Herxheimer, Joseph Coelho, Ankita Saxena, Ruth Awolola, and Natalie Linh Bolderston) discuss Blake. Organized by St. James’s, Piccadilly, and the Poetry Society.
Stuart, Jon. “[Talk Gnosis] William Blake, Poet of the Gnosis w/ Jason Whittaker.” Talk Gnosis (20 June 2021). A discussion with Jason Whittaker.
Townsend, Chris. “Words Overheard: On the Acrostic in William Blake’s ‘London.’” Wordsworth Grasmere (18 May 2021).
Tunney, James. “The Legacy of William Blake with James Tunney.” YouTube. 28 Oct. 2021. “James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish barrister who has lectured on legal matters throughout the world. He is a poet, a scholar, and author” (video description).
Vernon, Mark. “‘I give you the end of a golden string’: Blake, the Gita and God.” YouTube. 18 June 2021. A video talk on Blake, the divine, and the Bhagavad Gita.
Whittaker, Jason. Zoamorphosis.
The site was redesigned in late 2021. Whittaker reflects on its history and explains the updates in his post “Zoamorphosis: 2010–2022,” 1 Jan. 2022. Among the changes are a new set of postings on his YouTube channel, Zoavision. These include short excerpts from his new book, Divine Images, called “Blake Bites”; longer videos, including his interview with John Higgs; and the recordings of Global Blake, the large international conference held online in Jan. 2022.
Scholarship:
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Blake, Zines, and Gouda Cheese: An Interview with Max Reeves.” 15 Mar. 2021. Reeves is a “photographer, publisher, and activist,” and a member of the Blake Bloc, “an activist collective.”
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Psychic Pull: An Interview with Tamar Yoseloff.” 23 Mar. 2021. Yoseloff is a poet.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “A Conversation with David Suff.” 6 Apr. 2021. Suff is the author of the pamphlet A Conversation with Wm. Blake (Uppingham: Goldmark, 2019).
Katharina Hagen. “The Rose in a Perfect Circle.” 17 Apr. 2021. An analysis of the 2000 song “Rose” by the rock band A Perfect Circle.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Mental Travel: An Interview with Iain Sinclair.” 19 Apr. 2021. Sinclair is a publisher and writer.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Walking in Blake’s Footsteps: An Interview with Louisa Amelia Albani.” 26 Apr. 2021. Albani is the author of William Blake’s Mystic Map of London <Blake (2020)>.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “William Blake, Urban Shaman: An Interview with Niall McDevitt (ft. a Bonus Blakean Poem).” 13 May 2021. McDevitt is a poet who leads Blake walks.See the entry “A Thank You Letter to My Fellow Blake Walkers” (9 Dec. 2019) at McDevitt’s blog, Poetopography.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Ghost-Conversations with William Blake: An Interview with Sophie Herxheimer.” 18 June 2021. Herxheimer is a multimedia artist and poet, and a native of Lambeth.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Blakean Coordinates: An Interview with Chris McCabe.” 9 Nov. 2021. An interview with the poet and artist Chris McCabe, who was a co-curator of the exhibition The Bard, held at Flat Time House in Peckham from Jan. to Mar. 2020.
Reviews:
Jason Whittaker. “Visions of Saint Maud.” 28 Mar. 2021. Rev. of Rose Glass’s directorial debut, Saint Maud.
Jason Whittaker. “William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Review.” 13 Aug. 2021. Rev. of Joseph Viscomi, William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings. “An important intervention in the study of Blake as an artist.”
Blakeana:
Jason Whittaker. “Blakespotting, January 2021.” 7 Feb. 2021. Notes Patti Smith’s performances of “The Divine Image” and “The Tyger,” which were streamed in Jan. 2021 at Piccadilly Circus; the publication of Poetical Sketches at the Blake Archive; and Paul Grist’s comic book satire on Brexit, The Union.
Jason Whittaker. “Blakespotting, February 2021.” 13 Mar. 2021. Includes reflections on the passing of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and notices of Richard Ayodeji Ikhide’s exhibition Future Past; the film Saint Maud; and Pete Yeo’s ecocritical essay at Finding Blake (see Murray-White).
Jason Whittaker. “Blakespotting, March and April 2021.” 23 May 2021. Notes the Uffizi Gallery’s online presentation commemorating the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death; the short film “Blake Now”; and Kambiz Manouchehrian’s Persian translation of Blake.
Hephzibah Yohannan. “‘Opposition is true Friendship.’” 24 May 2021. On Blake and Eugene Halliday (1911–87), “artist, writer and psychotherapist.”
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Five August Blake Walks 2021.” 2 July 2021. Describes walks to be led by Niall McDevitt to places frequented by Blake (see Ritchie’s interview with McDevitt).
Jason Whittaker. “Blakespotting: Inside No. 9, ‘Last Night of the Proms.’” 11 July 2021. On the allusions to Blake, mostly to the hymn “Jerusalem,” in an episode of a British comedy.
Jason Whittaker. “Vala and Global Blake.” 28 Nov. 2021. An announcement of both the publication of the second issue of Vala, the journal of the Blake Society, and Global Blake, a virtual conference.
Leslie Wilber. “A Moving Illustration of William Blake’s Mythology.” 9 Dec. 2021. Describes Wilber’s illustration depicting Blake’s mythology.
Jason Whittaker. “From the Collection: Blake and Science Fiction and Fantasy.” 21 Dec. 2021. On some of the books inspired by or influenced by Blake in Whittaker’s collection.
Global Blake: Afterlives in Art, Literature and Music. 11-13 Jan. 2022. An online conference sponsored by the University of Lincoln and Bishop Grosseteste University, organized by Whittaker and Sibylle Erle.The dates given below are when the recordings of the talks were posted in the Global Blake section of Zoamorphosis. Descriptions of the presentations can be found at the links in the titles.
“Global Blake: Round Table.” 7 Feb. 2022. A discussion among the conference organizers and keynote speakers. Whittaker and Erle also usefully lay out their vision for Global Blake, both for the conference and for the future.
Keynote addresses
Presentations
Alexander Abichou. “Textual Spirituality and Analogical Imagination: A Transhistorical Investigation of William Blake and Ibn Arabi’s Mysticism.” 15 Jan. 2022.
Camille Adnot. “‘Blake le Voyant’: The Lasting Impact of the French Surrealists’ Reading of Blake.” 25 Jan. 2022.
Tanja Bakić. “Example from a Serbian Blog: From ‘A Poison Tree’ to ‘A Poison Fruit,’ or Producing Literary Meanings.” 17 Jan. 2022.
Franca Bellarsi. “From Blake to Buddha, Biology, and Beyond: The Renewal of ‘Prophetic Labour’ amidst the Beats and Affiliates.” 5 Feb. 2022.
Eliza Borkowska. “Polish Blake: William Blake: Dzieła zebrane (wydanie krytyczne).” 17 Jan. 2022.
Clare Broome Saunders. “‘Wild glances of the poetical faculty’: Blake’s Afterlives in Illustrations to E[lizabeth] B[arrett] B[rowning]’s Sonnets.” 15 Jan. 2022.
Steve Clark. “Blake’s Asia, Asia’s Blake.” 17 Jan. 2022.
Elizabeth Effinger. “Queer Family Resemblances: Between Joel-Peter Witkin and William Blake.” 6 Feb. 2022.
Adriano Ercolani. “The Influence of William Blake on Pop Culture.” 7 Feb. 2022.
Marta Fabi. “‘You are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.’ Tracking down William Blake’s Wor(l)ds into The Matrix.” 25 Jan. 2022.
Eugenie Freed. “Blake in Nieu Bethesda.” 18 Jan. 2022.
Jonathan Gross. “Blake’s Influence on Orozco: Prophecy, Mexican Murals, and NYC Graffiti.” 6 Feb. 2022.
Mark Lussier. “Blake at the Event Horizon: Strange Attractors, Visionary Physics, and Quantum Textualities.” 5 Feb. 2022.
M. Cecilia Marchetto-Santorun. “William Blake in Galician Literature and Art.” 5 Feb. 2022.
Jodie Marley. “What the Yeatses Partly Learned: A Vision, Blake’s Mysticism, and Spiritual Collaboration.” 15 Jan. 2022.
James Murray-White. “Finding Blake: An Interview with James Murray-White.” 19 Feb. 2022.
Tom Nisse. “Le film canoë—Dead man de Jim Jarmusch.” 5 Feb. 2022.
Camila Oliveira. “Global Blake: Afterlives in Musical Settings.” 1 Feb. 2022.
Christoph Reinfandt. “Musical Settings of William Blake: Implications of Genre.” 1 Feb. 2022.
Silvia Riccardi. “‘A pure linear undulation’: Blakean Inflections in Stile Liberty.” 18 Jan. 2022.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Local Blake: London-Based Small Presses, Urban Topography, and the Afterlives of Golgonooza.” 18 Jan. 2022.
Ramazan Saral. “Lost in Translation: The Problem of Translating Blake into Turkish.” 16 Jan. 2022.
Vera Serdechnaia. “Crying, Singing and Directing on Blake in Russia (2017–2021).” 5 Feb. 2020.
Suellen Cordovil da Silva. “William Blake, The Ghost of a Flea and Visions of the Daughters of Albion in From Hell.” 7 Feb. 2022.
Susanne Sklar. “Blake’s Global Vision.” 25 Jan. 2022.
David Smith. “‘When I see his work, my soul is taken to a world of stars’: Blake as an Influence on Manga.” 7 Feb. 2022.
Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa. “Visual Blake in Brazil: In Memoriam Donald Ault.” 5 Feb. 2022.
Juliana Steil. “Blake in Brazil: Translations.” 16 Jan. 2022.
Mei-Ying Sung. “Blake’s Orc and the Taiwanese Deity Nezha.” 17 Jan. 2022.
Masashi Suzuki. “Swedenborgian ‘Science of Correspondences’: William Blake and D. T. Suzuki.” 17 Jan. 2022.
Ines Tebourski. “Poetry/Image/Music: Multimodal Inscriptions on William Blake’s ‘London.’” 1 Feb. 2022.
Tatiana Tiutvinova. “A Harmony of Form and Idea: Illustrations by the Modern Russian Artists to Blake’s Poetry.” 5 Feb. 2022.
Colin Trodd. “William Blake and the Spiritual Forms of Citizenship and Hospitality.” 15 Jan. 2022.
Annalisa Volpone. “‘Along red network of his veins/What fires run, what craving wakes?’: Plath (Re)verses Blake.” 6 Feb. 2022.
Luke Walker. “‘Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!’: Allen Ginsberg’s Retellings of His ‘Blake Vision.’” 5 Feb. 2022.
David Worrall. “Neural Blake: Blake’s ‘Visions’ as Universal Entoptic Phenomena.” 15 Jan. 2022.
Zhongxing Zeng. “A Song Adaptation of ‘The Ecchoing Green.’” 1 Feb. 2022.
Zoavision:
Blake Bites:
“William Blake (Poet) (Earth-616).” Marvel Database. n.d.
William Blake Archive
Sarah Jones. Introduction. Contains a link to Sheila A. Spector’s “List of Biblical Illustrations.”
Jared N. Powell. “The Influence of Blake’s Westminster Abbey Assignment on His Biblical Illustrations.”
Jennifer Davis Michael. “Blake’s Apocryphal Scenes of the Infant Jesus.”
Naomi Billingsley. “The Public Ministry of Jesus in the Butts Biblical Designs.”
Sarah Jones. “The Evolution of a Plate for Illustrations of the Book of Job.”
Sheila A. Spector. “Blake’s Anagogical Interpretation of the Bible.”
Kendall DeBoer. “Blake’s Biblical Women and the Virgin-Vixen Axis.”
Scholarship:
Blakeana:
YouTube tutorials:
Part VI: Criticism, Biography, and Reviews
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T V W Y Z
A
Adam, Edina, with Julian Brooks, and an essay by Matthew Hargraves. William Blake: Visionary. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Reviews
Calè, Luisa. See
Blake 55.1.
Schierenbeck, Daniel D.
Choice 58.5 (Jan. 2021): 1 par.
Albani, Louisa. “Catherine.” See Vala.
Aman, Yasser K. R. “The Apocalyptic Image of the Beast in William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ and W. B. Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming.’” Critical Survey 33.3-4 (2021): 47-61. “The apocalyptic theory in Christianity has an impact on the development of the image of the beast in both poems” (abstract).
Ansari, Humayun. “Islam.” See Barbeau.
B
Bakić, Tanja. “‘Re-mediating’ William Blake in Croatia and Serbia.” See Blake 55.3.
Barbeau, Jeffrey W. The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781108711050. An interesting collection of essays, many of which make brief references to Blake. The most substantial discussions are found in:
Ansari, Humayun. “Islam.” 86-104. “Blake was positive, even sympathetic, in his reevaluation of Islam” (95).
Priestman, Martin. “Atheism.” 121-38. Considers the annotations to Watson to illustrate “how complex and unorthodox some positions we might still broadly describe as ‘Christian’ could be” (127).
Einboden, Jeffrey. “Poetry.” 141-60. Blake’s use of Hebrew and Hebrew poetics is considered in the section “Rintrah’s Abyss—Hebraic Blake” (144-48), which focuses on the biblical source of Rintrah in Marriage and Giora Leshem’s Hebrew translation of Marriage (1967–68). There is also a short discussion of The Ghost of Abel at the end of the chapter.
Myrone, Martin. “Painting.” 311-30. Rather than exploring Blake’s accomplishments, Myrone highlights the relative neglect of Blake in art history and ends the essay calling for “recovering some of the lost histories of religious painting” (329).
Barbour, Andrew John. “Blake’s Industrial Revolutions.” “Mechanical Powers: Engineering and Romantic Poetics in the Early Anthropocene.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2021. 21-52.
Barr, Mark L. “Blake’s Perpetual Revolution” and “The Gospel of Minute Particulars.” Romanticism and the Rule of Law: Coleridge, Blake, and the Autonomous Reader. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan-Springer Nature, 2021. ISBN: 9783030748777. 153-84 and 185-224. “I would suggest then that Romantic literary production, born in a formative moment for the rule of law, works to uphold that rule or at least attempts to formulate an ideal expression of it by framing its poetic subject in a particular way” (9).
Barrett, David V. Rev. of Jason Whittaker, Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake. See Whittaker, Divine Images.
Bayoğlu Kina, Filiz. “William Blake’in Eserlerinde İnsan [Human in William Blake’s Works].” Atatürk Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 66 (24 June 2021): 66-80. In Turkish.
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume 54, number 4 (spring 2021)
Articles
Robert N. Essick. “Blake in the Marketplace, 2020.” 5 pars., plus listings.
Caroline Anjali Ritchie. “Diagrammatic Blake: Tracing the Critical Reception of ‘The Mental Traveller.’” 30 pars. Considers and critiques the tradition of using diagrams to understand “The Mental Traveller.”
Volume 55, number 1 (summer 2021)
Articles
Wayne C. Ripley, with Fernando Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. “William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2020.” 38 pars., plus listings.
Jason Whittaker. “Blake and Music, 2020.” 3 pars., plus listings.
Luisa Calè. “Blake and Exhibitions, 2020.” 4 pars., plus listings.
Review
Luisa Calè. Edina Adam, with Julian Brooks, and an essay by Matthew Hargraves, William Blake: Visionary; Lives of William Blake: Henry Crabb Robinson, John Thomas Smith, Alexander Gilchrist, introduced by Martin Myrone. 14 pars. “In the absence of the accompanying experience of the originals, both catalogue and lives eloquently activate the reader’s imagination” (par. 14).
Volume 55, number 2 (fall 2021)
Remembrance
Morton D. Paley. “‘All his neighbourhood bewail his loss’: Bo Ossian Lindberg, 1937–2021.” 3 pars. A remembrance of Lindberg, with a select bibliography.
Articles
Silvia Riccardi. “The Body in the Line: ‘Trasumanar’ in Blake’s Dante.” 15 pars. “Are the density and articulation of colors and contours in the Dante designs accidental modifications of form, or do they spell out the artist’s own judgment upon the souls?” (par. 1).
Christopher Z. Hobson. “Blake, Methodism, and ‘Christian Perfection.’” 47 pars. “This essay argues that Blake rejected John Wesley’s teaching of ‘Christian perfection’ and examines the implications of this rejection for Blake’s ideas of morality, conduct, and social and sexual freedom” (par. 1).
Reviews
R. Paul Yoder. Sheila A. Spector, The Evolution of Blake’s Myth. 16 pars. “For her [Spector], the mainstream readings are like the encrustations protecting the selfhood that must be cast off in Milton, so that the narrative of that casting off can be folded into Blake criticism” (par. 16).
Wayne C. Ripley. Susan Mitchell Sommers, The Siblys of London: A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England. 14 pars. “Blakeans will be thoroughly intrigued” (par. 1).
Volume 55, number 3 (winter 2021–22)
“Blake in Europe,” ed. Sibylle Erle
Introduction
Sibylle Erle. “To See the Worlds of a Grain of Sand: Blake and Reception.” 29 pars. In addition to introducing the collection of essays, Erle provides a cogent theoretical groundwork for reception studies and Blake’s place therein.
Part I
Cătălin Ghiță. “William Blake’s Black Bible as a Spectacle of Doom: A Recent Note to Blakean Reception in Romania.” 18 pars. On the 2016 Romanian radio play Biblia neagră a lui William Blake [William Blake’s Black Bible].
Eliza Borkowska. “‘I inhabited the Land of Ulro long before Blake taught me its proper name’: Czesław Miłosz’s Ziemia Ulro/The Land of Ulro.” 19 pars. On Blake’s influence on Miłosz and the limits of translation and language.
Luisa Calè. “Reading Revolutions: Corrado Costa’s William Blake in Beulah, a Visionary Cartoon Essay in 1977 Italy.” 21 pars. Costa’s William Blake in Beulah is a Dadaist graphic novel.
Vera Serdechnaia. “The Mental Travellers: On Blake’s Reception by Nikolai Gumilyov.” 17 pars. The Russian writer Gumilyov (1886–1921) was the first to translate “The Mental Traveller.”
Part II
Tanja Bakić. “‘Re-mediating’ William Blake in Croatia and Serbia.” 24 pars. The essay “tries to answer how the artists [Zdenka Pozaić, Simonida Rajčević, and Aleksandra M. Jovanić] first perceived Blake, how each of them understood him, and in what way the figure of Blake guided them” (par. 2).
Cristina Flores. “‘Sick as a Rose’: William Blake in Leopoldo María Panero’s Poetry of Experience.” 11 pars. How Panero (1948–2014) used Blakean motifs.
Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa, Cláudia Franco Souza, and João Carlos Callixto. “Portuguese Readings of William Blake: Fernando Pessoa, a National Poet, and Três Tristes Tigres, a Pop-Rock Band.” 27 pars. Examines the influence of Blake on Pessoa (1888–1935) and discusses a musical adaptation of “The Tyger.”
Sibylle Erle. “‘Blake was a phenomenon’: Artistic, Domestic, and Blakean Visions in Joseph Paul Hodin’s Writing on Else and Ludwig Meidner.” 36 pars. On Blake’s influence on the painter and writer Ludwig Meidner (1884–1966).
Bloom, Harold. “Milton and William Blake: The Human Form Divine.” Take Arms against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind over a Universe of Death. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Hunt, Eileen M. “
Everything an Allusion: Wisdom Gleaned from a Lifetime of Reading Poems and Novels.”
Times Literary Supplement (2 July 2021): 4-5. Slight reference to Blake.
Bois, Catherine. Un langage investi: rhétorique et poésie lyrique dans le long XVIIIe siècle britannique. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Tholoniat, Yann.
Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 77 (2020): 3 pars. In French.
Bölükmeşe, Engin, and Halil Özdemir. “William Blake’in ‘Yankıyan Yeşillik’ adlı Eserinde Romantik Öğeler [Romantic Elements in William Blake’s ‘The Ecchoing Green’].” RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 25 (Dec. 2021): 1120-29. In Turkish.
Borkowska, Eliza. “‘I inhabited the Land of Ulro long before Blake taught me its proper name’: Czesław Miłosz’s Ziemia Ulro/The Land of Ulro.” See Blake 55.3.
Bowden, Betsy. “Audiovisual Oneness: The Wife of Bath by William Blake (1809).” The Wife of Bath in Afterlife: Ballads to Blake. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2017. <Blake (2019)>
Review
Turner, Marion.
Speculum 96.1 (Jan. 2021): 183-84. “The fact that equal space is given to visual and textual responses in the book is itself striking and speaks to the author’s interest in working in interdisciplinary ways and with diverse material to uncover the huge variety of responses to the same text” (184).
Bruder, Helen P. “Guys Wide Shut.” See Vala.
Brylowe, Thora. Romantic Art in Practice: Cultural Work and the Sister Arts, 1760–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. <Blake (2019)>
Review
Wootton, Sarah.
Review of English Studies 71.298 (Feb. 2020): 181-83.
Butler, Marilyn. Mapping Mythologies: Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. <Blake (2018, 2019)>
Review
Zimmerman, Sarah.
Romanticism 27.1 (2021): 109-10. “
Mapping Mythologies also offers an intriguing approach to Blake as ‘the culmination and the end of the tradition of popular national myth-making’ (162)” (110).
C
Calè, Luisa. “Blake and Dante.” See Blake Society in Part V.
Calè, Luisa. “Blake and Exhibitions, 2020.” See Blake 55.1.
Calè, Luisa. “Reading Revolutions: Corrado Costa’s William Blake in Beulah, a Visionary Cartoon Essay in 1977 Italy.” See Blake 55.3.
Calè, Luisa. Rev. of Edina Adam, with Julian Brooks, and an essay by Matthew Hargraves, William Blake: Visionary; Lives of William Blake: Henry Crabb Robinson, John Thomas Smith, Alexander Gilchrist, introduced by Martin Myrone. See Blake 55.1.
Campbell-Johnston, Rachel. Rev. of John Higgs, William Blake vs. the World. See Higgs.
Canto, Daniela Schwarcke do, Anselmo Peres Alós, and Juliana Prestes de Oliveira. “Os irmãos Rossetti e suas colaborações na biografia de William Blake, de Gilchrist.” Sociopoética 22.2 (2020): 64-79. In Portuguese (abstract and keywords in Portuguese, English, and Spanish). Traces the contributions of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti to Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake, “Pictor Ignotus.”
Cardoso, José Arlei. “Entre a inocência e a experiência: Intermidialidade e representação na arte de William Blake [Between Innocence and Experience: Intermediality and Representation in William Blake’s Art].” Letras & Letras 37.1 (2021): 191-206. In Portuguese (abstract in Portuguese and English).
Cauchi, Francesca. “Blake and Nietzsche on Self-Slaughter and the Moral Law: A Reading of Jerusalem.” Journal of European Studies 45.1 (2015): 3-20. “This essay examines the specific mechanism of moral coercion—a process of sublimation and condensation whereby the agonistic contraries within man are fixed into negating absolutes—and the extent to which such a process shapes the symbolic landscape of Blake’s final prophetic work, Jerusalem” (abstract).
Choe, Sharon. “Reading the Swan-Headed Riddle.” See Vala.
Churton, Tobias. “Antiquarianism: Stukeley and Blake” and “Blake and the Original Religion.” The Lost Pillars of Enoch: When Science and Religion Were One. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2021. ISBN: 9781644110430. 230-53.
Cogan, Lucy. Blake and the Failure of Prophecy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan-Springer Nature, 2021. ISBN: 9783030676872. “There was never any one stable model of prophecy animating Blake’s work, which was instead motivated by a continual urge to reinterpret the effect and significance of prophecy in the world” (4).
Cogan, Lucy. “Rending the ‘Soft Plains’ of America: Rape and Liberation in the Poetry of William Blake.” European Romantic Review 32.4 (2021): 377-97. “The representations of sexual assault in Blake’s work are neither an endorsement nor an evasion of the gendered dynamics of forced sex, but are instead evidence of his efforts to work through his own uncertainty regarding what limits, if any, the drive for personal liberty should observe” (abstract).
D
Davies, Keri. “Benjamin Heath Malkin, 1769–1842: A Bio-bibliography.” See Index Rerum in Part V.
Davies, Keri. “Blake’s Cottage at Felpham.” See Index Rerum in Part V.
Davies, Keri. “Milton: Titlepage or Frontispiece.” See Index Rerum in Part V.
Davies, Keri. “William Blake’s Cat.” See Index Rerum in Part V.
Dearing, Todd. “Daimonic Art: Mediating Text and Imagery in Blake’s Jerusalem.” Journal of Romanticism 4 (2021).
Digby, Joan, with illustration by Sally Kindberg. “Is That You, Grandma?” See Vala.
Duclos, Michèle. “‘Le langage de l’imagination est symbolique’: Le Symbolisme et l’Imagination selon Kathleen Raine.” Revue européenne de recherches sur la poésie 7 (2021): 155-65. In French. “When Raine declared herself a Symbolist, with no hint to French Symbolism, she was referring to how her own corpus of works is permanently linked to her understanding of the twin concept of the Imagination, with a timeless link to Oriental creativity.”English translation by Fernando Castanedo.
Dzhumaylo, Ol'ga. Rev. of Vera Serdechnaia, Uil'yam Bleik v russkoi kul'ture (1834–2020). See Serdechnaia, Uil'yam Bleik.
E
Eagles, Diane. “The Lamb at the Gate.” See Vala.
Effinger, Elizabeth. “The Agon of Blake.” See Vala.
Einboden, Jeffrey. “Poetry.” See Barbeau.
Eisenman, Stephen F., ed. William Blake and the Age of Aquarius. Princeton: Princeton University Press and the Block Museum of Art, 2017. <Blake (2018)>
Review
Hagan, Jade.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 15.3 (2021): 433-40.
Erle, Sibylle. “‘Blake was a phenomenon’: Artistic, Domestic, and Blakean Visions in Joseph Paul Hodin’s Writing on Else and Ludwig Meidner.” See Blake 55.3.
Erle, Sibylle. “On This Day in 1820: The Visionary Heads and William Blake’s Attitude towards Death (Part II).” See BARS Blog in Part V.
Erle, Sibylle. “On This Day in 1820: William Blake Draws Pindar the Greek Poet and Lais the Courtesan (Visionary Heads) for John Varley (Part I).” See BARS Blog in Part V.
Erle, Sibylle. “Some Things Need to Be Seen to Exist: What’s in a Name?” See Vala.
Erle, Sibylle. “To See the Worlds of a Grain of Sand: Blake and Reception.” See Blake 55.3.
Erle, Sibylle, and Morton D. Paley, eds. The Reception of William Blake in Europe. 2 vols. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. <Blake (2020, 2021)>
Reviews
Walker, Luke.
Recherche littéraire/Literary Research 37 (automne/fall 2021): 277-86. In English. “A monumental work of scholarship” (286).
Womersley, David. “
Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.”
SEL 60.3 (2020): 597-645 (Blake section 602-05).
Erle, Sibylle, with illustration by John Riordan. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Lost Letter, Found.” See Vala.
Essick, Robert N. “Blake in the Marketplace, 2020.” See Blake 54.4.
F
Ferrer-Ventosa, Roger. “El eterno deleite de la imaginación. Idea de la imaginación en el Romanticismo, especialmente en William Blake.” Aisthesis 68 (2020): 139-59. In Spanish (abstract and keywords in Spanish and English).
Fletcher, Joseph. William Blake as Natural Philosopher, 1788–1795. London: Anthem Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781785279515.
Flores, Cristina. “‘Sick as a Rose’: William Blake in Leopoldo María Panero’s Poetry of Experience.” See Blake 55.3.
Franceschini, Marcele Aires. “Now the sneaking serpent walks: Diabolic as a Creation Force in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, by William Blake.” Ilha do Desterro 74.1 (2021): 147-61. In English.
Freed, Eugenie. “‘The Watry Shore’: Blake and the Platonic Ideal.” See Vala.
G
Ghiță, Cătălin. “William Blake’s Black Bible as a Spectacle of Doom: A Recent Note to Blakean Reception in Romania.” See Blake 55.3.
Gilroy-Ware, Cora. The Classical Body in Romantic Britain. See Gilroy-Ware under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition in Division II.
Glynn, Paul. Rev. of John Higgs, William Blake vs. the World. See Higgs.
Goode, Mike. “Blakespotting” and “The Joy of Looking: What William Blake’s Pictures Want.” Romantic Capabilities: Blake, Scott, Austen, and the New Messages of Old Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Whitson, Roger.
Review of English Studies 73.308 (Feb. 2022): 185-87.
Graber, Sheila, Sam Gainsborough, and John Riordan. “Animating Blake.” See Vala.
Groom, Nick. Rev. of John Higgs, William Blake vs. the World. See Higgs.
H
Hagan, Jade. Rev. of William Blake and the Age of Aquarius, ed. Stephen F. Eisenman. See Eisenman.
Hagen, Katharina. “The Rose in a Perfect Circle.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Haggarty, Sarah. “Blake’s Newton, Line-Drawing, and Geometry.” Studies in Romanticism 60.2 (2021): 123-51. Proposes two new sources for the Newton print and positions “him [Blake] for the first time in his contemporary mathematical-cultural context” (127), with references to his supposed argument with Thomas Taylor over geometry.
Haggarty, Sarah, ed. William Blake in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. <Blake (2020, 2021)>
Review
Womersley, David. “
Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.”
SEL 60.3 (2020): 597-645 (Blake section 602-05). “The quality is uneven” (604).
Halton-Hernandez, Emilia. “‘A poet of human nature’: Marion Milner’s William Blake.” Critical Quarterly 63.4 (Dec. 2021): 111-25. Milner (1900–98) was a British psychoanalyst who wrote on Blake (e.g., WBHC p. 2407).
Hamilton, Paul. “Future Restoration.” Romanticism and Time: Literary Temporalities. Ed. Sophie Laniel-Musitelli and Céline Sabiron. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021. ISBN: 9781800640726. On the use of time by Romantic writers, including Blake. (Blake is touched on very slightly in the introduction and a few of the other chapters.)
Helsinger, Elizabeth. Rev. of Jonah Siegel, Material Inspirations. See Siegel.
Higgs, John. “Visionaries across Time: The Shared Magic of Prince and William Blake.” Quietus (2 June 2021): 9 pars. “Both men were compelled to create, regardless of whether there was an audience for the art being made” (par. 3).
Higgs, John. “William Blake vs. AI.” Big Issue North (20 Aug. 2021): 14 pars. On Eric Drass’s use of AI to create “a variety of strange and oddly beautiful images which clearly do have a Blakean aesthetic” (par. 3) and the limitations of the images in relationship to human creativity.
Higgs, John. William Blake vs. the World. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021. ISBN: 9781474614351. A study of Blake’s ideas, aimed at a popular audience.An extract on the 1809 exhibition was published in the Art Newspaper (9 July 2021).
Reviews
Campbell-Johnston, Rachel. “
William Blake vs. the World by John Higgs Review—A Trip through Blake’s Multiverse.”
Times (30 Apr. 2021). Behind a paywall.
Glynn, Paul. “
William Blake: Biography Offers Glimpse into Artist and Poet’s Visionary Mind.”
BBC News (26 June 2021). Pace Glynn, Higgs’s book is not a biography.
Groom, Nick. “
Not from Our World: The Genius and Modern Resonance of William Blake.”
Times Literary Supplement (30 July 2021): 11. Higgs “handles the complexities of Blake, particularly the later Blake, with adroit confidence.”
Simmons, Ian. “Blake’s Heaven.”
Fortean Times (1 Dec. 2021): 61. “Higgs grasps the essence of Blake and makes it as comprehensible as it is ever likely to be for a non-specialist audience.”
Wilson, Andy. “
Blake in Beulah: A Review of John Higgs’s William Blake vs. the World.”
The Traveller in the Evening (24 May 2021).
Wilson, Frances. “
We’ve Embraced William Blake without Having Any Idea of What He Was On About.”
Spectator (3 July 2021): 7 pars. “Higgs compares Blake to the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu; also to Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and Lennon and McCartney: ‘To judge Blake by
Songs of Innocence is like judging the Beatles by the song “Yellow Submarine.”’ I grew weary of these analogies—further misreadings, perhaps, which do little to explain Blake’s sublime strangeness” (par. 7).
Talks
Brand, Russell. “
Episode #201: Finding Light.”
Facebook. 5 Sept. 2021. A preview of Higgs’s appearance on Brand’s podcast,
Under the Skin.
British Library. “
William Blake vs. the World: Why He Matters More Than Ever.”
YouTube. 23 June 2021. An interview with Higgs juxtaposed with readings of Blake’s works and examinations of the British Library Blake holdings.
Cox, Nick. “
Campfire Presents: William Blake vs. the World (Highlights).”
YouTube. 2 Aug. 2021.
Higgs, John. “
John Higgs on William Blake vs. the World.”
YouTube. 18 June 2021. A talk for the London Philosophy Club.
Higgs, John. “
William Blake vs. the World.” See
Blake Society in Part V.
History Extra. “
William Blake: ‘Artist or Genius, or Mystic, or Madman.’” 2 June 2021.
How To Academy. “
John Higgs—William Blake vs. the World.” n.d.
Kostick, Conor. “
2021-06-25 Andy & Conor: William Blake vs. the World.”
YouTube. 26 June 2021. Kostick interviews Andy Wilson about “Blake in Beulah,” his review of Higgs’s book (see the
review).
Ramsey, William. “
Author John Higgs Discusses His New Book William Blake vs. the World.”
YouTube. 28 May 2021.
Stone, Aug. “
John Higgs on the Etcetera ETC with Aug Stone Podcast.”
YouTube. 9 Aug. 2021.
Whittaker, Jason. “Jason Whittaker, John Higgs: In Conversation.” See
Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Hobson, Christopher Z. “Blake, Methodism, and ‘Christian Perfection.’” See Blake 55.2.
Hunnekuhl, Philipp. “‘matters of Religion & Morality’: Herder, Wordsworth, and Blake.” Henry Crabb Robinson: Romantic Comparatist, 1790–1811. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Marshall, Tom.
Wordsworth Circle 52.4 (2021): 516-20.
I
Islam, Md. Monirul. “‘For the darkness of Asia was startled’: Blake and the East.” Oriental Wells: The Early Romantic Poets and Their Eastern Muse. New Delhi: Bloomsbury Indian, 2021. ISBN: 9789389165203. 73-105. Considers the influence of Orientalist “scholars, travelers, and painters” (14) on Blake and his views of Hinduism, India, Islam, and Muhammad in light of his own “Anglo-centric and Christo-centric conception of the world” (15).
J
Jones, Sarah. “The Development of the Biblical Illustrations Exhibition.” See William Blake Archive in Part V.
K
Kayaaltı, Mahmut. “Controversial Representation of God and Christianity in William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” MA thesis, Kütahya Dumlupınar University, 2021. In English (abstract in English and Turkish).
Kirwan, Michael. “Fearful Symmetry, Seventy Years On: Northrop Frye on William Blake.” Prophetic Witness and the Reimagining of the World: Poetry, Theology and Philosophy in Dialogue—Power of the Word V. Ed. Mark S. Burrows, Hilary Davies, and Josephine von Zitzewitz. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. 13 pp. On Frye, Blake, and James Joyce.
Kowalczyk, Joanna Natalia. “The Invisibility of the Female Body.” See Vala.
Kozyrev, D. “Sravnitel'nyi analiz russkikh perevodov stikhotvoreniya Uil'yama Bleika ‘The Fly’ [Comparative Analysis of Russian Translations of William Blake’s ‘The Fly’].” Problemy effektivnogo ispol'zovaniya nauchnogo potentsiala obshchestva [Problems of Efficient Use of the Scientific Potential of Society]. Ufa, 2021. ISBN: 9785907369313. 7-12. In Russian. The author compares six translations of “The Fly” into Russian, by S. Marshak, T. Stamova, A. Kudryavitskii, S. Neshcheretova, S. Stepanov, and M. Ankudinov.
L
Leader, Carol. “Reflections on the Dark Feminine in Blake and Jung.” See Vala.
Lee, Haram. “The Critique of Reason and Biopolitics in William Blake’s The Four Zoas.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 63.1 (spring 2021): 53-77. “For Blake, the liberal radicals such as Thomas Paine, John Thelwall, and Joseph Priestley paved the way for a technology of biopolitical governance on the rise in the late 1790s because, not unlike Malthus, they embraced the misconceived notion of reason as a mere instrument for the mastery of self and nature” (55).
Lesso, Rosie. “William Blake: Poet, Artist, Prophet.” Collector (16 Aug. 2021): 15 pars. An overview of Blake’s life.
Leveton, Jacob Henry. “Seeing Ecology: Pollination and the Resistance to Adam Smith’s Theory of Political Economy in William Blake’s Book of Thel (1789).” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 42.5 (2020): 537-52.
Leveton, Jacob Henry. “William Blake’s Radical Ecology.” PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2021.
Lewis, Roger. “Was William Blake a Genius, or Just a Sex-Obsessed Madman?” Telegraph (23 May 2021). Thankfully behind a paywall.
Loures, Isabela Ferreira. “William Blake contra os ‘Moinhos Satânicos’ da racionalidade moderna [William Blake against the ‘Satanic Mills’ of Modern Rationality; William Blake contra los ‘Molinos Satánicos’ de la racionalidad moderna].” Ars 19.43 (2021): 462-507. In Portuguese (abstract in Portuguese, English, and Spanish). Blake’s work “should be acknowledged as a turning point in early modern aesthetics” (abstract).
Loydell, Rupert. Rev. of Jason Whittaker, Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake. See Whittaker, Divine Images.
Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Małgorzata. “The Experience of Female Embodiment in William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion.” Nordic Journal of English Studies 19.1 (2020): 1-27. “I hope to demonstrate that through his criticism of thinking that perceives the body as inferior in the gendered binary Blake not only rehabilitates the body as equally important as the mind, but also succeeds in delivering the psychologically viable and progressive message that the divorce between the mind and the body can only create a virtually torn, unhappy subject” (3-4).
Lussier, Mark. “Beyond Pure Poetics: On the Rhythmic Impulse in Romanticism.” Wordsworth Circle 52.1 (2021): 94-117. “In different ways, Blake, Byron, and Shelley undertake rhythmic operations with affective aspirations and in the process express the literal spirit of the age, a rhythmic presence operative at all scales, active in every atom and cell, and manifest in material and mental processes” (113).
M
Makdisi, Saree. Reading William Blake. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. <Blake (2016, 2018, 2019)>
Review
Marx, Bill. “
Book Review: Divine Images—William Blake’s Imagination as Mankind’s Saving Grace.”
Art Fuse (6 July 2021): 8 pars. Critical review of Whittaker’s
Divine Images that turns to Makdisi’s book, calling it “one of the best introductions to Blake’s unruly genius I have read” (par. 7).
Marchetto Santorum, Cecilia. “Comparative Study of William Blake’s Illuminated Books and Alan Moore’s Graphic Novels.” PhD diss., Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain), 2021. In English (abstract in Galician). “Blake and Moore have a similar idea of visionary imagination as the power that divinises the self and expands it beyond social convention. The aim of this thesis is to situate the authors in the different moments they occupy in the process of secularisation. … The comparative analysis reveals the ideas of transformation of nature and of the mind both authors propose, and the imaginative and visionary modes of perceptions that would lead to this change. Finally, this thesis discovers the particular interpretation of Blake Moore creates and its key elements” (abstract).
Marchetto, Cecilia. “Embracing the Unseen: (Female) Voices Crying in the Wilderness.” See Vala.
Marley, Jodie, with illustration by G. E. Gallas. “On The Book of Thel and Pandemic Prophecies.” See Vala.
Marshall, Tom. Rev. of Philipp Hunnekuhl, Henry Crabb Robinson: Romantic Comparatist, 1790–1811. See Hunnekuhl.
Marx, Bill. Rev. of Jason Whittaker, Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake. See Whittaker, Divine Images, and Makdisi.
Matthews, Susan. “Blake and Gender.” See Vala.
McDevitt, Niall. “Revolting Romantics.” History Today (14 Apr. 2021): 13 pars. Considers the story that Blake warned Thomas Paine to flee to France.
McLoughlin, Dominic. Rev. of David Shaddock, Poetry and Psychoanalysis. See Shaddock.
McQuail, Josephine A. “Rachel V. Billigheimer: Dancing toward Eternity.” See Vala.
Myrone, Martin, intro. Lives of William Blake. London: Pallas Athene, 2019. <Blake (2020)> B. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Calè, Luisa. See
Blake 55.1.
Interview
Getty Museum. “
William Blake’s Eccentric Arts.” 23 June 2021. A podcast hosted by Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, in which Myrone is interviewed.
Myrone, Martin. “Painting.” See Barbeau.
Myrone, Martin, and Amy Concannon, with an afterword by Alan Moore. William Blake. London: Tate Publishing, 2019. Catalogue for the 2019–20 Tate Britain exhibition. <Blake (2020, 2021)>
Review
Schierenbeck, Daniel D.
Choice 57.10 (June 2020): 1 par.
N
Ness, Richard. “Vibrant Meter: Periods, Pulsations, and Prosody in Blake’s Milton.” “Ecological Prosodies: Rhythmic Environments and Experimental Meters in British Romantic Poetry.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2021. 27-68.
O
Oroskhan, Muhammad Hussein. “Devotional Mysticism: An Analogical Study of Hafez-e Shirazi and William Blake.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 11.5 (May 2021): 475-80. Hafez-e Shirazi was a fourteenth-century Persian poet.
P
Paley, Morton D. “‘All his neighbourhood bewail his loss’: Bo Ossian Lindberg, 1937–2021.” See Blake 55.2.
Pierce, Robyn. “Unity in ‘The Divine Image.’” See Vala.
Powell, Rosalind. “Perception and the Body.” Perception and Analogy: Poetry, Science, and Religion in the Eighteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781526157041. 209-55. Discusses Blake and Edward Young in a section of the chapter titled “The Material Body and Spiritual Perception” (219-28).
Priestman, Martin. “Atheism.” See Barbeau.
Puig Guisado, Jaime. “Lecturas, traducciones, cosmogonías y otros viajes poéticos: un estudio comparado de William Blake y Juan Ramón Jiménez.” Artifara 21.1 (2021): 245-57. In Spanish (abstract in Spanish and English). Traces how Juan Ramón Jiménez came to read Blake and analyzes the latter’s influence on the Spanish poet.
R
Rajan, Tilottama, and Joel Faflak, eds. William Blake: Modernity and Disaster. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Schierenbeck, Daniel D.
Choice 59.2 (Oct. 2021): 1 par.
Raven, Marina White. “Invisible Female Bodies.” See Vala.
Riccardi, Silvia. “The Body in the Line: ‘Trasumanar’ in Blake’s Dante.” See Blake 55.2.
Riccardi, Silvia. “‘Desires of ancient times’: Feminine Metamorphoses in Ovid and Blake.” See Vala.
Riordan, John. “The Female Will.” See Vala.
Riordan, John. “St. Maud—Review.” See Vala.
Ripley, Wayne C. Rev. of Susan Mitchell Sommers, The Siblys of London: A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England. See Blake 55.2.
Ripley, Wayne C., with Fernando Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. “William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2020.” See Blake 55.1.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “Blake, Zines, and Gouda Cheese: An Interview with Max Reeves.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “Blakean Coordinates: An Interview with Chris McCabe.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “A Conversation with David Suff.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “Diagrammatic Blake: Tracing the Critical Reception of ‘The Mental Traveller.’” See Blake 54.4.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “‘Forming the fluctuating Globe’: Weaving Women and Corporeal Cartography in Blake’s Jerusalem.” See Vala.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “Ghost-Conversations with William Blake: An Interview with Sophie Herxheimer.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “Mental Travel: An Interview with Iain Sinclair.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “Psychic Pull: An Interview with Tamar Yoseloff.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “Walking in Blake’s Footsteps: An Interview with Louisa Amelia Albani.” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “William Blake, Urban Shaman: An Interview with Niall McDevitt (ft. a Bonus Blakean Poem).” See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Rogers, Annise. “Vala and Metamorphosis: Is a Picture Worth 4,000 Lines?” See Vala.
Rosewell, Tamsin. “The Unknown Warriors.” See Vala.
Rowland, Christopher. “‘Diversely and in many ways God spoke by the prophets’: New Testament Perspectives and the Texts and Images of William Blake on the ‘Prophetic Word.’” Prophetic Witness and the Reimagining of the World: Poetry, Theology and Philosophy in Dialogue—Power of the Word V. Ed. Mark S. Burrows, Hilary Davies, and Josephine von Zitzewitz. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. 15 pp. On Blake and the prophetic tradition: “The consideration of William Blake’s work and his sense of vocation are an important component of the history of prophecy in Christianity, not least because he stressed the ethical dimension of the life of those with a prophetic vocation as key to their message” (abstract).
Rowland, Christopher. “William Blake and the King James Bible.” Modern Believing 53.2 (2012): 131-39. Analyzes Blake’s engagement with the King James Bible largely through the letters to Trusler and Illustrations of the Book of Job.
Rowland, Christopher. “William Blake as leitourgos.” Sacred Modes of Being in a Postsecular World. Ed. Andrew W. Hass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 164-82. “Explores Blake’s vocation to a public role and his exploration of creativity and conformity in his engagement with the Bible, literature and art” (abstract).
Ryan, James Emmett. Rev. of Devin P. Zuber, A Language of Things. See Zuber.
S
Sakamoto, Masahiro. “Heisoku suru muku, Kaisei suru sozoryoku: Maehara Masaharu Blake no kodomo no shi karano shokuhatsu [Innocence Choked, Imagination Regenerated: Masaharu Maehara Inspired by Blake’s Poetry for Children].” Tohoku Bungaku no Sekai [World of Tohoku Literature] 29 (2021): 1-20. In Japanese. An article about Blake and Masaharu Maehara, a poet and a high-school teacher of English in the Tohoku (Northeast) region of Japan.
Sánchez Tierraseca, Mónica. “Un proyecto cosmogónico con forma humana. Nociones de Swedenborg en William Blake [A Cosmogonic Project with a Human Form. Notions of Swedenborg in William Blake].” Revista Eviterna 9 (2021): 79-91. In Spanish (abstract and keywords in Spanish and English).
Santos, Andrio J. R. dos. “‘A bloodless Creation’: Sangue, corpo e apocalipse em Anne Rice and William Blake [“‘A bloodless Creation’: Blood, Body, and Apocalypse in Anne Rice and William Blake].” Todas as Musas 12.2 (2021): 164-76. In Portuguese (abstract and keywords in Portuguese and English).
Santos, Andrio J. R. dos. “O corpo como acesso ao divino na arte iluminada de William Blake [The Body as Access to the Divine in William Blake’s Illuminated Art].” Estudos Avançados 35.103 (2021): 141-54. In Portuguese (abstract and keywords in Portuguese and English).
Saral, Ramazan. “Poems.” See Vala.
Sato, Hikari. “‘Miru me wa shiru kokoro yorimo masaru’: Yanagi Muneyoshi no mingei to Blake kenkyu [‘The Eye sees more than the Heart knows’: The Folk Crafts and Blake Studies of Muneyoshi Yanagi].” Yanagi Muneyoshi: Mingei Utsukushisa wo motomete [Muneyoshi Yanagi: Folk Crafts Seeking for Beauty]. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2021. ISBN: 9784582922943. 24-25. In Japanese. 2 plates by Blake.
Schierenbeck, Daniel D. Rev. of Edina Adam, with Julian Brooks, and an essay by Matthew Hargraves, William Blake: Visionary. See Adam with Brooks.
Schierenbeck, Daniel D. Rev. of Martin Myrone and Amy Concannon, with an afterword by Alan Moore, William Blake. See Myrone and Concannon.
Schierenbeck, Daniel D. Rev. of William Blake: Modernity and Disaster, ed. Tilottama Rajan and Joel Faflak. See Rajan and Faflak.
Schouten de Jel, Joshua. Blake and Lucretius: The Atomistic Materialism of the Selfhood. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan-Springer Nature, 2021. ISBN: 9783030888879. “Explores the Epicurean legacy in William Blake’s work” (abstract) by examining the reception history of Epicurus and Lucretius in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientific writings and religious polemics.
Schouten de Jel, Joshua. “William Blake’s Selfhood and the Atomistic Materialism of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.” PhD diss., University of Plymouth, 2021.
Schuchard, Marsha Keith. A Concatenation of Conspiracies: “Irish” William Blake and Illuminist Freemasonry in 1798. Alexandria, VA: Plumbstone Academic, 2021. ISBN: 9781603020565. Highlights the centrality of Ireland to Blake’s thought and his religious and political milieu.
Sedlmayr, Gerold. Rev. of James Whitehead, Madness and the Romantic Poet: A Critical History. See Whitehead.
Serdechnaia, Vera. “Dmitrii Smirnov kak perevodchik i biograf Uil'yama Bleika [Dmitrii Smirnov as William Blake’s Translator and Biographer].” Voprosy Literatury 5 (2021): 233-45. In Russian (abstract in Russian and English).
Serdechnaia, Vera. “The Mental Travellers: On Blake’s Reception by Nikolai Gumilyov.” See Blake 55.3.
Serdechnaia, Vera. “Odin iz ‘bol'shoi shesterki’: Uil'yam Bleik kak predstavitel' angliiskogo romantizma [One of the ‘Big Six’: William Blake as the Representative of English Romanticism].” Uchenye zapiski Orlovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Scientific Notes of Orel State University] 2.91 (2021): 104-08. In Russian (abstract in Russian and English).
Serdechnaia, Vera. “Pochemu geroi Andreya Tavrova plachet po Bleiku? [Why Does Andrei Tavrov’s Hero Lament over Blake?].” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 169 (2021): 309-21. In Russian (abstract in Russian and English). The author analyzes the influence of Blake on the poetry book Platch po Bleiku [Сrying on Blake], written by Russian poet Andrei Tavrov (2018), which shows many interesting ways of re-creating Blake’s myth and biography in the context of Russian and world poetry.
Serdechnaia, Vera. “Tvorchestvo Uil'yama Bleika v russkoi literaturovedcheskoi retseptsii postsovetskogo perioda [The Reception of William Blake in Russian Literary Criticism of the Post-Soviet Period].” Uchenye zapiski Orlovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Scientific Notes of Orel State University] 2.91 (2021): 100-03. In Russian (abstract in Russian and English).
Serdechnaia, Vera. “Uil'yam Bleik v angloyazychnom literaturovedenii XXI v. [Blake Studies in the Twenty-First Century].” Studia Litterarum 6.2 (2021): 456-77. In Russian (abstract in Russian and English).
Serdechnaia, Vera. Uil'yam Bleik v russkoi kul'ture (1834–2020) [William Blake in Russian Culture (1834–2020)]. Moscow: Gorodets, 2021. ISBN: 9785907220829. In Russian (abstract in English). This book offers the story of Blake’s reception in Russian criticism, literature, and music. It covers translations, including the forgotten (Vladimir Elsner, 1912) and the newly discovered (Nikolai Gumilyov, 1919–21, and Serafima Remizova, 1920s–30s), and the way that Blake’s poetry influenced such Russian poets as Konstantin Balmont, Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Daniil Kharms, Gumilyov, Joseph Brodsky, Veniamin Blazhenny, Yuri Stefanov, and Andrei Tavrov. Blake also caught the attention of a few Russian composers: Dmitrii Smirnov wrote about forty symphonic works on Blake; in 2020 Leonid Fedorov recorded an album, Blake, and Alexander Belousov created an opera, The Book of Seraphim, based on The Book of Thel, at the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, Moscow.
Review
Dzhumaylo, Ol'ga. “
Fenomen Bleika v Rossii i ego istorizatsiya. Retsenziya na knigu: Serdechnaya V. Uil'yam Bleik v russkoi kul'ture (1834–2020). Moskva: ID “Gorodets,” 2021. 416 s. [The Blake Phenomenon in Russia and Its Historicization. Book Review: Serdechnaia V.
William Blake in Russian Culture (
1834–2020). Moscow: ID “Gorodets,” 2021. 416 pp.].”
Novoe Proshloe/The New Past 3 (2021): 268-74. “The evidence of Blake’s influence on the cultural landscape of Russia (including the Soviet and post-Soviet stages) is considered in the monograph and covers a significant array of translations, personal writings, anthologies, and artistic and documentary facts. At the same time, various evidence of the influence of Western reading traditions on Blake’s Russian reception in literature, intellectual culture, and creativity in general (poetry, graphics, ballet, etc.) is also introduced.”
Serdechnaia, Vera. “Uil'yam Bleik v sovremennoi russkoi literature i kul'ture [William Blake in Contemporary Russian Literature and Culture].” Imagologiya i komparativistika [Imagology and Comparative Studies] 15 (2021): 71-88. In Russian (abstract in Russian and English).
Sha, Richard C. “Blake and the Mark of the Cognitive: Notes towards the Appearance of the Sceptical Subject.” Distributed Cognition in Enlightenment and Romantic Culture. Ed. Miranda Anderson, George Rousseau, and Michael Wheeler. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781474442282. 204-18. Uses distributed cognition to analyze “London.”
Shaddock, David. “Mind-Forg’d Manacles: William Blake and the Emancipation of Consciousness.” Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
McLoughlin, Dominic.
Psychodynamic Practice 28.1 (2022): 94-99. “Occasionally, David Shaddock’s assertions in the critical commentary become too sweeping.”
Shah, Lena. “Discovering William Blake: How Blake Inspired My First Book of Prose and Poetry.” See Vala.
Sherwood, Harriet. “William Blake Cottage at Risk of Being Lost, Says Historic England.” Guardian (4 Nov. 2021): 11 pars. On the dire need to repair Blake’s Felpham cottage.
Shrimpton, Nicholas. “‘To Tirzah,’ or William Blake’s Changes of Mind.” Essays in Criticism 71.1 (2021): 20-45.
Siegel, Jonah. “Blake.” Material Inspirations: The Interests of the Art Object in the Nineteenth Century and After. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Helsinger, Elizabeth.
Review 19 (19 Mar. 2021): 12 pars.
Simmons, Ian. Rev. of John Higgs, William Blake vs. the World. See Higgs.
Sklar, Susanne. “Jerusalem: Feminine Divine!” See Vala.
Smallwood, Philip. “Tension, Contraries, and Blake’s Augustan Values.” Paper, Ink, and Achievement: Gabriel Hornstein and the Revival of Eighteenth-Century Scholarship. Ed. Kevin L. Cope and Cedric D. Reverand II. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781684482528. 176-91. On Blake’s use of Augustan-era writers and conventions, from Dryden to Johnson. (The wider collection is an interesting festschrift commemorating the publisher Gabriel Hornstein, who transformed AMS Press and created many venues for eighteenth-century scholarship.)
Sommers, Susan Mitchell. The Siblys of London: A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England. See Sibly in Division II.
Şorop, Aloysia. “‘Si j’ai tort, j’ai tort en belle compagnie.’ William Blake et ses expériences intimes de la spiritualité.” Au plus profond de soi: quand le spirituel se fait intime. Ed. Sylvie Crinquand and Paloma Bravo. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Éditions EME, 2016. ISBN: 9782806635068. 57-68. In French.
Sousa, Alcinda Pinheiro de, Cláudia Franco Souza, and João Carlos Callixto. “Portuguese Readings of William Blake: Fernando Pessoa, a National Poet, and Três Tristes Tigres, a Pop-Rock Band.” See Blake 55.3.
Spector, Sheila A. The Evolution of Blake’s Myth. New York: Routledge, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Yoder, R. Paul. See
Blake 55.2.
Stubbs, Harriet. “Invisible Women in Blake’s Mythology.” See Vala.
T
Tholoniat, Yann. Rev. of Catherine Bois, Un langage investi: rhétorique et poésie lyrique dans le long XVIIIe siècle britannique. See Bois.
Thomas, Sarah. “Unmasking ‘simple truth.’” Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. <Blake (2020, 2021)>
Review
Young, Allison.
Slavery and Abolition 42.2 (2021): 402-04.
V
Vala: The Journal of the Blake Society
Issue 2 (Nov. 2021)
Articles
Erle, Sibylle. “Some Things Need to Be Seen to Exist: What’s in a Name?” 4-5. Reflections on Oothoon and Vala as the background for introducing an issue focused on “‘invisible women’ and gender in Blake” (5).
Rosewell, Tamsin. “The Unknown Warriors.” 6-7. A description of her original art “about the hidden pain and lasting damage caused to women’s bodies, and often to their minds too, while trying to create new life” (6).
Albani, Louisa. “Catherine.” 8-9. Reflections on her original art presenting “Catherine’s rightful ‘place’ next to Blake in the printing process” (8).
Digby, Joan, with illustration by Sally Kindberg. “Is That You, Grandma?” 10-13. On The Book of Thel and her grandmother.
Marley, Jodie, with illustration by G. E. Gallas. “On The Book of Thel and Pandemic Prophecies.” 14-16. “An introduction to the poem and a meditation on its relevance to collective anxieties at this moment in time” (14).
Riordan, John. “The Female Will.” 17-21. A comic strip in which Catherine reflects on her life with William.
Raven, Marina White. “Invisible Female Bodies.” 22-27. “Reflections on the experience of Encountering William Blake, a live-streamed performance during Lockdown 2020” (23).
Weldon, Amy. “People’s Faces, in a World Upside Down.” 28-30. On teaching Blake and Kae Tempest when the world is falling apart.
Bruder, Helen P. “Guys Wide Shut.” 31-37. On male blindness in Blake’s work and scholarship, with reflections on Bruder’s own early work and what feminist and queer perspectives can bring and have brought to Blake studies.
Marchetto, Cecilia. “Embracing the Unseen: (Female) Voices Crying in the Wilderness.” 38-41. On invisible women in Blake and in the academy.
Sklar, Susanne. “Jerusalem: Feminine Divine!” 42-45. Argues for Jerusalem’s centrality to the plot of Jerusalem.
Leader, Carol. “Reflections on the Dark Feminine in Blake and Jung.” 46-51. “Both men’s visions of the dark aspects of the feminine are skewed in the direction of a male view” (46).
Stubbs, Harriet. “Invisible Women in Blake’s Mythology.” 52-61. “Within Blake’s mythology, I believe that there are invisible women from Blake’s life that inform and influence his female characters” (54).
Matthews, Susan. “Blake and Gender.” 62-67. “Why do we think that we can read gender in a poet and artist born in the mid-eighteenth century?” (63).
Pierce, Robyn. “Unity in ‘The Divine Image.’” 68-71. On “The Divine Image” and community in the pandemic world.
Kowalczyk, Joanna Natalia. “The Invisibility of the Female Body.” 72-73. On her illustration, inspired by “The Sick Rose.”
Riccardi, Silvia. “‘Desires of ancient times’: Feminine Metamorphoses in Ovid and Blake.” 74-76. “In William Blake’s America (1793), one cannot overlook the similarities between the iconography of Daphne and the female figure morphing into a plant on the left margin of plate 15” (74).
Eagles, Diane. “The Lamb at the Gate.” 77-81. On her ceramic figure made partly “from the earth removed during the setting of [Blake’s] new grave marker in Bunhill Fields” (79).
Choe, Sharon. “Reading the Swan-Headed Riddle.” 82-84. On women and the “Swan-headed Girl” in Jerusalem.
Saral, Ramazan. “Poems.” 85-86.
Shah, Lena. “Discovering William Blake: How Blake Inspired My First Book of Prose and Poetry.” 87-90. About being inspired by both the Petworth House and Tate Britain exhibitions.
Graber, Sheila, Sam Gainsborough, and John Riordan. “Animating Blake.” 91-103. Riordan interviews the artists who created animation pieces for the 1978 and 2019–20 Tate exhibitions, respectively.For links to the pieces, see Ayun Halliday, “William Blake’s Paintings Come to Life in Two Animations” <Blake (2021)>.
Ritchie, Caroline Anjali. “‘Forming the fluctuating Globe’: Weaving Women and Corporeal Cartography in Blake’s Jerusalem.” 104-07. “Much can be gained, I think, from reading these female figures as potentially legitimate participants in a wider project of bodying forth maps for the emergent future” (107).
Effinger, Elizabeth. “The Agon of Blake.” 108-11. “More than one year into the pandemic in a time that feels violent, oppressive, and isolating, I also see the Laocoön engraving as a call for hope, the challenge to continue wrestling and ‘not cease from mental fight’” (111).
Freed, Eugenie. “‘The Watry Shore’: Blake and the Platonic Ideal.” 112-18. On the “Introduction” of Songs of Experience.
Rogers, Annise. “Vala and Metamorphosis: Is a Picture Worth 4,000 Lines?” 119-21. On the dragon-woman illustration from page 26 of the Vala, or The Four Zoas manuscript.
Reviews and notices
Erle, Sibylle, with illustration by John Riordan. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Lost Letter, Found.” 122-23. A fictional 13 Dec. 1792 letter to William Godwin on Fuseli’s Nightmare.
Riordan, John. “St. Maud—Review.” 124-25.
McQuail, Josephine A. “Rachel V. Billigheimer: Dancing toward Eternity.” 126-27. A remembrance of the Blake and Yeats scholar, whose major work is a study of the two poets, Wheels of Eternity (1990).
Viscomi, Joseph. “William Blake’s 1818 Letter to Dawson Turner and Later Career as Graphic Artist.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Mar. 2022. An examination of Blake’s 9 June 1818 letter to Turner that aims “to reveal why [Blake] refused Turner’s request [to produce a new copy of the Large Book and Small Book of Designs], had stopped printing most of his illuminated books, and stopped color printing and monoprinting altogether” (abstract).
Viscomi, Joseph. William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings. London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021. ISBN: 9781913107208. A definitive reappraisal of Blake’s “printed paintings” (his large color prints, or monoprints) that reconsiders his method of producing them, positions them in the context of his artistic career and of Romantic-era art, and articulates the proper fields for interpreting them.An excerpt was published as “Impressions of Colors: On William Blake’s Monoprints,” Lapham’s Quarterly (20 July 2021).
The two appendices (“Blake Redefines Fresco” and “Monoprints after Blake’s Death, 1827–1863”) are not included in the printed text, but the link is given in the book’s list of abbreviations (vi) and at the Related Sites page of the Blake Archive.
Review
Jason Whittaker. See
Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Vultee, Denise M., Todd H. Chiles, and Sara R. S. T. A. Elias. “Entrepreneurial Imagination: A Blakean Perspective.” World Scientific Encyclopedia of Business Sustainability, Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Vol. 3, Spirituality, Entrepreneurship and Social Change. Ed. Kathryn Pavlovich and Gideon Markman. Singapore: World Scientific, 2022. 25-55. Uses Blake as a model for creative entrepreneurship.
W
Walker, Luke. Rev. of The Reception of William Blake in Europe, ed. Sibylle Erle and Morton D. Paley. See Erle and Paley.
Wanderlinde, William Weber. “The Contraries’ Progression: Romantic Irony in the Introductory Poems of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” Ilha do Desterro 74.1 (2021): 163-82. In English. “This paper is an attempt to understand the ironies present in some poems of Songs of Innocence and of Experience” (abstract).
Weldon, Amy. “People’s Faces, in a World Upside Down.” See Vala.
Whitehead, James. Madness and the Romantic Poet: A Critical History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. <Blake (2018)>
Review
Sedlmayr, Gerold.
Review of English Studies 69.292 (Nov. 2018): 998–1000.
Whitney, Julian S. “Slaying the Demon King: William Blake and Urizen in Devil May Cry 5.” See William Blake Archive in Part V.
Whitson, Roger. Rev. of Mike Goode, Romantic Capabilities: Blake, Scott, Austen, and the New Messages of Old Media. See Goode.
Whittaker, Jason. “Blake and Music, 2020.” See Blake 55.1.
Whittaker, Jason. Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake. London: Reaktion Books, 2021. ISBN: 9781789142877. A popular biography and study of Blake’s works.
Reviews
Barrett, David V. “Blake’s Heaven.”
Fortean Times (1 Dec. 2021): 61. “His concentration on political rather than religious influences on Blake’s unique mythology seems a blind spot.”
Loydell, Rupert. “
London Calling.”
International Times (24 Apr. 2021): 8 pars. “Whittaker’s
Divine Images is a fantastic mix of biography, art criticism and literary engagement which serves as a wonderful introduction to this complex and confusing artist” (par. 5).
Marx, Bill. “
Book Review: Divine Images—William Blake’s Imagination as Mankind’s Saving Grace.”
Art Fuse (6 July 2021): 8 pars. “Presents a disappointingly conventional overview of the artist’s achievement” (par. 4).
Whittaker, Jason. Rev. of Joseph Viscomi, William Blake’s Printed Paintings. See Zoamorphosis in Part V.
Whittaker, Jason. “William Blake: Prophet of Hell.” Prospect (11 Mar. 2021): 10 pars. Asks why so many atheists identify with Blake.
“William Blake: Poet, Painter, Indie Zine Maker.” Liber Ludorum (17 May 2021). An overview of Blake’s life and works that compares the illuminated books with role-playing games.
§ Wills, Bernard Newman. “William Blake: Neo-Platonist and Sexual Radical?” International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 16.1 (Apr. 2022): 29-47.
Wilson, Andy. Rev. of John Higgs, William Blake vs. the World. See Higgs.
Wilson, Frances. Rev. of John Higgs, William Blake vs. the World. See Higgs.
Wofford, Ada. “Ginsberg’s Memories of Blake’s Sunflower.” See William Blake Archive in Part V.
Wofford, Ada. “Melanie Smith and the Influence of Blake.” See William Blake Archive in Part V.
Womersley, David. Rev. of William Blake: Selected Works, ed. Peter Otto; The Reception of William Blake in Europe, ed. Sibylle Erle and Morton D. Paley; and William Blake in Context, ed. Sarah Haggarty. See William Blake: Selected Works in Part I, Section B; Erle and Paley; and Haggarty, William Blake in Context.
Wootton, Sarah. Rev. of Thora Brylowe, Romantic Art in Practice: Cultural Work and the Sister Arts, 1760–1820. See Brylowe.
§ Worrall, David. “Les relations de William Blake et de ses mécènes, vues sous l’angle de la neurologie.” Le Mécénat littéraire aux XIX e et XXe siècles. Ed. Anne Struve-Debeaux. Paris: Éditions Hermann, 2019. ISBN: 9791037000842. 119-40. In French.
Y
Yan, Hanjin. “Reforming the Relations of the Sexes: Zhou Zuoren’s Translation and Imitation of William Blake’s Poems about Love and Sexuality.” NAN NÜ: Men, Women, and Gender in China 22.2 (2020): 313-41. “Probes into the motivation behind Zhou Zuoren’s (1885–1967) translation and imitation of the English poet William Blake’s (1757–1827) poems about love and sexuality in the May Fourth era” (abstract).
§ Yeats, William Butler. William Blake. La imaginación y el simbolismo. Madrid: Archivos Vola, 2019. 20 cm. 84 pp. ISBN: 9788412089707. In Spanish.
Yoder, R. Paul. Rev. of Sheila A. Spector, The Evolution of Blake’s Myth. See Blake 55.2.
Young, Allison. Rev. of Sarah Thomas, Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition. See Thomas.
Z
Zimmerman, Sarah. Rev. of Marilyn Butler, Mapping Mythologies: Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History. See Butler.
Zuber, Devin P. “Planetary Pictures.” A Language of Things: Emanuel Swedenborg and the American Environmental Imagination. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019. <Blake (2020)>
Review
Ryan, James Emmett.
Journal of American History 108.2 (2021): 356.
Division II: William Blake’s Circle
Banks, Joseph (1743–1820)
Scientist
McNeil, Peter. “Sir Joseph Banks: ‘the Fly Catching Macaroni’” and “Richard Cosway: ‘the Macaroni Painter.’” Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. 101-05 and 105-14. Sections on depictions of Banks and Cosway as macaronis. The book contains passing references to Angelica Kauffman and John Caspar Lavater.
Review
Wiehe, Jarred.
Eighteenth-Century Studies 54.2 (2021): 449-52.
Banks, Thomas (1735–1805)
Sculptor
Gilroy-Ware, Cora. The Classical Body in Romantic Britain. See Gilroy-Ware under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Boydell, John (1720–1804)
Engraver, printseller
Goring, Paul. “John Opie’s Portrait of Charles Macklin and the Shakespeare Gallery.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 39.3 (2020): 184-93. On Opie’s portrait of the actor that was exhibited at Boydell’s Shakspeare Gallery.
Mitchell, James. “Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759–1817) and Boydell’s Shakspeare Gallery.” British Art Journal 20.3 (2019–20): 116-18. On two rediscovered paintings by Ibbetson from The Taming of the Shrew for Boydell’s Shakspeare Gallery.
Constable, John (1776–1837)
Painter
Robbins, Nicholas. “John Constable, Luke Howard, and the Aesthetics of Climate.” See Robbins under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Cosway, Richard (1742–1821)
Miniaturist, Blake’s acquaintance
McNeil, Peter. “Richard Cosway: ‘the Macaroni Painter.’” See McNeil under Joseph Banks.
Cowper, William (1731–1800)
Poet, friend of William Hayley
Farrell, Molly. “Data as Poetry in Cowper’s Statistical ‘Effusions.’” ELH 87.4 (2020): 1025-54. In a thoughtful article examining poetry’s relationship to statistics, Farrell argues that Cowper’s “Verses Subjoined to the Bill of Mortality of Northampton” “take the foundational documents of biopolitical governmentality as a source of inspiration and even a model for creative innovation” (1027-28).
Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition
Carlson, Julia S. “Historical Poetics, Poetics of History: Priestley’s Time Charts and the Visualization of Meter.” Wordsworth Circle 52.1 (2021): 1-33. Argues that Joseph Priestley’s innovative use of charts “facilitated a new way of representing time in poetry and scanning it on the page” (13).
Farrell, Molly. “Data as Poetry in Cowper’s Statistical ‘Effusions.’” See Farrell under Cowper.
Germann, Jennifer. “‘Other Women Were Present’: Seeing Black Women in Georgian London.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 54.3 (2021): 535-53. Considers the representation in visual art of Black women, including Dido Elizabeth Davinier (c. 1760/1–1804), Elizabeth Sancho (1766–1837), and Jane Harry Thresher (c. 1758–84), with a substantial focus on Joshua Reynolds and slight mention of Joseph Nollekens.
Gilroy-Ware, Cora. The Classical Body in Romantic Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781913107062. An important reexamination of notions and displays of the classical body that engages with religion and race. Blake and many members of his artistic milieu (George Cumberland, Joseph Farington, Henry Fuseli, John Gibson, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds, William Sharp, Benjamin West, and Johann Joachim Winckelmann) are referenced throughout, but Thomas Banks (“Hidden Dreams,” 31-67) and John Flaxman (“Poetic Departures,” 69-113) receive extended, detailed analysis.
Reviews
Ferrari, Roberto C.
Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture 19.2 (2020): 14 pars. “Offers new ways of thinking about art in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain” (par. 12).
Ives, Lucy. “
Monumental Invisibility.”
Art in America (Nov.-Dec. 2020): 74-75. Available online in an article of the same title, dated 7 Oct. 2020.
Senior, Rebecca.
Sculpture Journal 30.1 (2021): 93-95.
Jenkins, Susan. “The Politics of Public Monuments: Parliamentary Commissions of Monuments for Westminster Abbey in 1798.” Sculpture Journal 30.1 (2021): 9-29. Considers John Flaxman’s monument (1798–1804) to Captain James Montagu and John Bacon’s monument (1798–1804) to Captains John Harvey and John Hutt “as case studies in the politics of commissioning and installation” (11). The appendix includes “unpublished documents relating to the commissioning of the monument to Captain James Montagu at Westminster Abbey” (26) that relate to Flaxman. There are also passing references to Allan Cunningham, Joseph Farington, Thomas Banks, Joseph Nollekens, and Prince Hoare, but none to Flaxman’s Letter to the Committee for Raising the Naval Pillar (1799) and Blake’s engravings for it.
Lee, T. C. “Anatomy and Academies of Art II—A Tale of Two Cities.” Journal of Anatomy 236.4 (2020): 577-87. On the teaching of anatomy at both the Royal Academy of Arts (London) and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts (Dublin), with substantial discussion of William Hunter, the first professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy.
Roach, Catherine. “‘The Higher Branches’: Genre and Race on Display at the British Institution, London, 1806.” Art History 44.2 (2021): 312-40. An important article that digitally reconstructs the 1806 exhibition of the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts to examine its arguments regarding race and “the ranking of various peoples from throughout the British Imperial sphere” (313).
Robbins, Nicholas. “John Constable, Luke Howard, and the Aesthetics of Climate.” Art Bulletin 103.2 (June 2021): 50-76. “In the early decades of the nineteenth century, artists and scientists fashioned new modes of visual representation adequate to climate’s elusive forms” (50).
Spies-Gans, Paris Amanda. “Exceptional, but Not Exceptions: Public Exhibitions and the Rise of the Woman Artist in London and Paris, 1760–1830.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 51.4 (2018): 393-416. Documents women who exhibited their art in London and Paris, with references to individual artists, such as Mary Moser (1744–1819), Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), and Mary Ann Flaxman (1768–1833), and to the practices of the Royal Academy, Associated Artists in Water-Colours, and the Society of British Artists regarding female artists.
Cumberland, George (1754–1848)
Dilettante, polymath, friend of Blake
Gilroy-Ware, Cora. The Classical Body in Romantic Britain. See Gilroy-Ware under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Cunningham, Allan (1784–1842)
Biographer
Sullivan, Matthew Greg. “‘Vivid presentiments of action and character’: Allan Cunningham’s Anecdotes of British Sculptors.” Journal of Art Historiography 23 (Dec. 2020): 23 pp. Discusses Cunningham’s use of the anecdote, touching on the “Brief Memoir” of John Flaxman by Maria Denman.
Darwin, Erasmus (1731–1802)
Scientist, poet
§ Elliott, Paul A. Erasmus Darwin’s Gardens: Medicine, Agriculture and the Sciences in the Eighteenth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781783276103.
Porter, Dahlia. “Erasmus Darwin’s Prose of the World: Induction and the Philosophical Poem.” Science, Form, and the Problem of Induction in British Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Heringman, Noah.
Eighteenth-Century Studies 54.2 (2021): 469-72. “One of Porter’s most valuable contributions within this context is to harness the power of media history to the analysis of issues in the history of science and its interaction with literature” (472).
Flaxman, John (1755–1826)
Sculptor, friend of Blake
Gilroy-Ware, Cora. The Classical Body in Romantic Britain. See Gilroy-Ware under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Jenkins, Susan. “The Politics of Public Monuments: Parliamentary Commissions of Monuments for Westminster Abbey in 1798.” See Jenkins under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Pellicer Mor, José Luis. “Homero y John Flaxman. La reinterpretación de los poemas homéricos a través del dibujo neoclásico.” Saguntina 17 (2021): 11-51. In Spanish. On Flaxman’s revision of Homeric epic through drawing.
Sullivan, Matthew Greg. “‘Vivid presentiments of action and character’: Allan Cunningham’s Anecdotes of British Sculptors.” See Sullivan under Cunningham.
Hayley, William (1745–1820)
Man of letters, patron of Blake
Picón, Daniela. “Recepción de La Araucana en el romanticismo inglés: William Hayley y Robert Southey.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 98.3 (2021): 249-67. In Spanish. On the reception by Hayley and Southey of Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s sixteenth-century epic poem, La Araucana, with special reference to Romantic and anticolonial readings.
Hervey, James (1714–58)
Clergyman, writer
§ Meditaciones entre los sepulcros [Meditations among the Tombs]. Ed. and trans. Mariano González Campo. Madrid: Miraguano Ediciones, 2016. 109 pp. ISBN: 9788478134533. In Spanish.
Review
Cámara-Arenas, Enrique.
Hermēneus 22 (2020): 497-501. In Spanish.
Hogarth, William (1697–1764)
Artist
Carrabine, Eamonn. “Low Life: William Hogarth, Visual Culture and Sociologies of Art.” British Journal of Sociology 72.4 (2021): 909-29. Examines “how Hogarth’s work conjures up a new vision of the world, providing shape and meaning to the nation’s changing understandings of morality, society, and the city” (abstract).
Guthrie, Neil. “Another Pass for Vauxhall Gardens by William Hogarth?” Medal 78 (2021): 13-19.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone, eds. Hogarth and Europe. London: Tate Publishing, 2021. ISBN: 9781849767682. A catalogue for the Tate Britain exhibition of the same name, held from 3 Nov. 2021 to 20 Mar. 2022.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone. “Preface.” 9-11.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone. “Painting Modern Life, Making the Modern World.” 13-23.
Sloboda, Stacey. “London.” 25-31.
Knolle, Paul. “Amsterdam.” 33-39.
Williams, Hannah. “Paris.” 41-47.
Yarker, Jonny. “Venice.” 49-53.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone. “Modern Painters.” 55.
de Fouw, Josephina. “‘The Dutch Hogarth’: Cornelis Troost.” 60-69.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone. “Artist and Cities.” 71.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone. “Modern Moral Narratives.” 97.
Tharp, Lars. “Pots in Hogarth.” 102-07.
de Kok, Gerhard. “An American Party in a Dutch Colony.” 128-31.
Gilroy-Ware, Cora, and Temi Odumosu. “Between the Sheets.” 134-37.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone. “High Life.” 139.
Barrett, Sonia E. “Performing Furniture.” 156-59.
Himid, Lubaina. “A Fashionable Marriage.” 164-67.
Gamer, Meredith. “Sexuality and Seduction.” 172-75.
Insley, Alice, and Martin Myrone. “The New Europeans.” 177.
“Artist Biographies.” 200-06.
Mindham, R. H. S. “William Hogarth’s Depiction of Bedlam—Psychiatry in Pictures.” British Journal of Psychiatry 219.4 (2021): 569. Uses Hogarth’s “Scene in Bedlam” to give a history of the hospital.
Patey, Caroline, Cynthia E. Roman, and Georges Letissier, eds. Enduring Presence: William Hogarth’s British and European Afterlives. 2 vols. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021. Cultural Interactions: Studies in the Relationship between the Arts, vol 46. ISBN: 9781800791558.
Volume I
Ogée, Frédéric. “Foreword.”
Patey, Caroline. “Introduction. Hogarth Everywhere.” 1-27.
Part I: The Politics of Taste
Mazza, Emilio. “Ships, Hunters and Anatomists. Hogarth and Hume.” 31-53.
Franzini, Elio. “Aesthetic Variations on the Line of Beauty.” 55-65.
Roman, Cynthia E. “James Gillray’s Hogarthian ‘Ridicule.’ The Contest of Graphic Satire and the Academy.” 67-82.
Rossi, Laura. “From Pavel Fedotov to Viktor Shklovsky. The Turbulent Fortunes of William Hogarth in Russia and the USSR.” 83-97.
Consonni, Stefania. “A Note on Hogarth’s Serpentine Beauty. Geometry and Hermeneutics, Intelligence and Eroticism.” 99-109.
Part II: Hogarth’s Stages
Cambiaghi, Mariagabriella. “Hogarth and Garrick. Or, the British Model for the Nineteenth-Century Actor in Italy.” 127-41.
Castellari, Marco. “A Threepenny Hogarth. Brecht, Benjamin, and a Friendship, with Hogarthian Traces between Weimar and Exile.” 143-61.
Soncini, Sara. “Hogarth in Drag. Acts of Transvestism in The Grace of Mary Traverse and Mother Clap’s Molly House.” 163-82.
Cavecchi, Mariachristina. “Hogarth’s Progress in Nick Dear’s The Art of Success.” 183-204.
Part III: In Other Media
Gueden, Marie. “‘The knight of the organic line of beauty’ and Film. Or, William Hogarth and Sergei M. Eisenstein.” 227-47.
Greenup, Sylvia. “An Even Lower Before and After. Homage, Presentism and Strategy in Two TV Adaptations of A Harlot’s Progress.” 249-71.
Capoferro, Riccardo. “Hogarth and the History of Graphic Novels.” 273-85.
Croci, Daniele. “Ripping Yarns. William Hogarth in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell.” 287-97. Passing mention of Blake.
Laudando, C. Maria. “Hogarth between London and Johannesburg. A Serpentine Progress through the Metropolis of Past and Present.” 299-320.
Volume II
Part I: The Hogarth Effect on Prose
Loretelli, Rosamaria. “The Analysis of Beauty and the New Eighteenth-Century Narrative Paradigm.” 3-24.
Ferrari, Roberta. “The Drama of Real Life. Charles Lamb and ‘Tragic’ Hogarth.” 25-39.
Bugliani, Paolo. “The Comedy of Artistic Bathos. William Hazlitt’s Familiarity with Hogarth.” 41-56.
Orestano, Francesca. “Hogarth, Dickens, and the Progress of Vision.” 57-79.
Part II: Proto-modernist and Modernist Offshoots
Modenesi, Marco. “‘A wholly popular name.’ William Hogarth in French Fin-de-Siècle Literature.” 97-108.
Saunders, Max. “Hogarth, Ford Madox Brown and Ford Madox Ford.” 109-29.
Ascari, Maurizio. “The Present Is the Only Time. Mansfield’s ‘Marriage à la Mode’ and the Inability to Change.” 131-42.
Guerra, Lia. “Joyce’s Giacomo Joyce and Hogarth’s Aesthetics.” 143-54.
Reynier, Christine. “Rebecca West’s and David Low’s Intermedial Dialogue with William Hogarth in The Modern ‘Rake’s Progress’ (1934).” 155-69.
Part III: Dialogues with Contemporary Novelists
Cimarosti, Roberta. “Creole Britain in Hogarth and David Dabydeen’s Hogarthian Books.” 183-205.
Grazzini, Serena. “The Line of Grace in Peter Handke’s Essay on the Successful Day. With an Excursus on Hogarth’s Reception in German-Speaking Areas.” 207-26.
Rose, Margaret. “William Hogarth and Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital. The Institution’s Afterlife in Fiction and Onstage.” 227-37.
Crotti, Alessandra. “A Rake’s Progress of Stamford Hill? Howard Jacobson Meets William Hogarth.” 239-56.
Letissier, Georges. “William Hogarth’s Serpentine Line in Alan Hollinghurst’s ‘Variety Composed’ Literary Aesthetics.” 257-75.
Howard, John (1726–90)
Prison reformer
Cervantes, Gabriel, and Dahlia Porter. “Extreme Empiricism: John Howard, Poetry, and the Thermometrics of Reform.” Eighteenth Century 57.1 (spring 2016): 95-119. “Examines an outpouring of printed poems and biographical publications in the 1780s and 1790s that sought to shape the public image of the celebrated prison reformer John Howard” (abstract), including an engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi after George Romney.
Cervantes, Gabriel, and Dahlia Porter. “Walking with John Howard: Itineracy and Romantic Reform.” Romanticism 27.1 (2021): 4-15. Examines how Howard’s The State of the Prisons (1777) “presents a tension between asserting common humanity with prisoners and exercising patrician benevolence” (abstract).
Hunter, William (1718–83)
Physician, anatomist
Lee, T. C. “Anatomy and Academies of Art II—A Tale of Two Cities.” See Lee under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Kauffman, Angelica [Angelika Kauffmann] (1741–1807)
Painter
Barker, Emma. “She Reinvented History Painting from a Female Perspective.” Apollo 193.693 (Jan. 2021): 25-26. An appreciation of Kauffman in relation to the exhibition at the Royal Academy that had to be canceled (see Baumgärtel).
Baumgärtel, Bettina, ed. Angelica Kauffman. Munich: Hirmer, 2020. ISBN: 9783777434629. The catalogue for the exhibition held at the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf from 30 Jan. to 20 Sept. 2020. It was originally scheduled to be exhibited at the Royal Academy from 28 June to 20 Sept., but was canceled because of COVID.
Baumgärtel, Bettina. “‘The whole World is angelicamad.’” 10-17.
Valentine, Helen. “‘The elements of art’: Four Ceiling Roundels for the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House.” 18-23.
Myssok, Johannes. “Angelica Kauffman and Antonio Canova: A Friendship between Two Artists in Rome.” 24-29.
Holubec, Inken Maria. “Angelica Kauffman and the Neoclassical Picture: Material, Technology and Painting Process.” 30-35.
Baumgärtel, Bettina. Catalogue. 36-199.
Review
Roworth, Wendy Wassyng.
Woman’s Art Journal 42.1 (2021): 46.
Vickery, Amanda. “Branding Angelica: Reputation Management in Late Eighteenth-Century England.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 43.1 (2020): 3-24.
Macpherson, James (1736–96)
Writer
Davis, Leith. “Transnational Articulations in James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian and The History and Management of the East-India Company.” Eighteenth Century 60.4 (winter 2019): 441-60. Considers “how both The Poems of Ossian and the History problematize the construction of the nation in relation to its colonies” (442).
Mortimer, John Hamilton (1740–79)
Painter
Roach, Catherine. “‘The Higher Branches’: Genre and Race on Display at the British Institution, London, 1806.” See Roach under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Palmer, Samuel (1805–81)
Painter, Blake’s disciple
§ Harrison, Colin. The Works of Samuel Palmer. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2021. ISBN: 9781910807460. According to the publication information available online, “Revised and updated from the original 1999 edition.”
Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804)
Theologian, scientist
Carlson, Julia S. “Historical Poetics, Poetics of History: Priestley’s Time Charts and the Visualization of Meter.” See Carlson under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Pughe, William Owen (1759–1835)
Welsh antiquarian
Kaminski-Jones, Rhys. “William Owen Pughe and Romantic Rewritings of the Poetry of Llywarch Hen.” Review of English Studies 73.308 (Feb. 2022): 100-20. Chronicles Pughe’s translation of Llywarch Hen’s bardic poetry.
Reynolds, Joshua (1723–92)
Painter
Germann, Jennifer. “‘Other Women Were Present’: Seeing Black Women in Georgian London.” See Germann under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Hunter, Matthew C. Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. <Blake (2020)>
Review
Ambrosio, Chiara.
Ambix 69.1 (2022): 85-87.
Robinson, Henry Crabb (1775–1867)
Writer
Hunnekuhl, Philipp. Henry Crabb Robinson: Romantic Comparatist, 1790–1811. See Hunnekuhl in Division I, Part VI.
Stelzig, Eugene. “Henry Crabb Robinson’s Reminiscences as Autobiography.” Wordsworth Circle 52.1 (2021): 134-53. Anticipating the Oxford University Press publication of Robinson’s manuscripts, Stelzig suggests that the Reminiscences “add up to a significant autobiographical and literary achievement” (134). (No references in the article to Robinson’s encounters with Blake.)
Royal Academy of Arts
Lee, T. C. “Anatomy and Academies of Art II—A Tale of Two Cities.” See Lee under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Spies-Gans, Paris Amanda. “Exceptional, but Not Exceptions: Public Exhibitions and the Rise of the Woman Artist in London and Paris, 1760–1830.” See Spies-Gans under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Sandby, Paul (1731–1809)
Painter
Prodger, Michael. “How Paul Sandby Painted Britain as He Saw It.” New Statesman (10 Sept. 2021): 60-61.
Sibly, Ebenezer (1750–99), and Manoah Sibly (1757–1840)
Esoteric booksellers
Sommers, Susan Mitchell. The Siblys of London: A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Ripley, Wayne C. See
Blake 55.2 in Division I, Part VI.
Stedman, John Gabriel (1744–97)
Soldier, writer, friend of Blake
Senior, Emily. “Skin, Textuality and Colonial Feeling.” The Caribbean and the Medical Imagination, 1764–1834: Slavery, Disease and Colonial Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. <Blake (2020, 2021)>
Reviews
Bohls, Elizabeth A.
Eighteenth-Century Studies 54.3 (2021): 707-12. “It’s impossible to do justice to Senior’s sophisticated and nuanced analysis” (711).
Lau, Travis Chi Wing.
Modern Philology 118.4 (2021): E257-59.
Thomas, Sarah. “Unmasking ‘simple truth.’” Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. <Blake (2020, 2021)> See Thomas in Division I, Part VI.
Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688–1772)
Mystic
Follesa, Laura. “A Comparison of Wolff ’s and Kant’s Receptions of Emanuel Swedenborg.” Kant-Studien 112.1 (2021): 1-22. “I juxtapose Kant’s and [Christian] Wolff’ s evaluations of Swedenborg’s work at the origins of their different attitudes towards fundamental problems such as the nature of the soul and immortality” (abstract).
McQuillan, J. Colin. “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Kant’s Critical Method: Comments on Stephen R. Palmquist’s Kant and Mysticism.” Kantian Review 26.1 (2021): 113-17. “I conclude that Kant’s critical method was not well-formed during the 1760s and did not emerge from Kant’s reflections on Swedenborg” (abstract).
Taylor, Thomas (1758–1835)
Neoplatonist
Haggarty, Sarah. “Blake’s Newton, Line-Drawing, and Geometry.” See Haggarty, “Blake’s Newton,” in Division I, Part VI.
Muller, S. Marek. “Archival Mocking as Feminist Praxis: A Rhetorical Repurposing of A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes.” Women’s Studies in Communication 44.1 (2021): 23-43. An ironic reading of A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, Taylor’s parody of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that transforms it into “a solid defense of animal liberation based on vegan ecofeminist principles of empathy, care, and the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human worlds” (40).
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717–68)
Aesthetic theorist
Betzer, Sarah. “Patch, Walpole, and Queer Complicity.” Art History 43.5 (2020): 1038-64. “Faced with the powerful antinomy of (Winckelmann’s) queer classical and (Walpole’s) queer gothic, I propose here that we reconsider our approach to thinking the queer eighteenth century” by examining “the work of artist Thomas Patch (1725–82)” (1039).
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–97)
Author, radical, known in Blake’s circle
Botting, Eileen Hunt. “Wollstonecraft in Jamaica: The International Reception of A Vindication of the Rights of Men in the Kingston Daily Advertiser in 1791.” History of European Ideas 47.8 (2021): 1304-14. “The reception of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) in the Kingston Daily Advertiser helped to spread abolitionist and revolutionary discourse on rights in the British colony of Jamaica—due west of Saint-Domingue—during the first three months of 1791” (1304).
Botz, Samantha. “Reorienting Sympathy: Rereading Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men.” Studies in Romanticism 60.3 (2021): 331-52. Develops the Vindication’s response to Burke.
Boyson, Rowan. “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Right to Air.” Romanticism 27.2 (2021): 173-86. “This article situates her numerous remarks on air alongside medical sources, racialized climatological theory, slavery cases, and the pneumatic chemistry of the 1790s” (abstract).
Clery, E. J. “Revising the Professional Woman Writer: Mary Wollstonecraft and Precarious Income.” Huntington Library Quarterly 84.1 (spring 2021): 27-38.
Green, Karen. “The Rights of Woman and the Equal Rights of Men.” Political Theory 49.3 (2021): 403-30. Some mention of Wollstonecraft in relationship to Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulay.
Johnson, Nancy E., and Paul Keen, eds. Mary Wollstonecraft in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. <Blake (2021)>
Review
Wolfson, Susan J.
Wordsworth Circle 52.4 (2021): 572-79. “I find the sum somewhat uneven” (574).
Muller, S. Marek. “Archival Mocking as Feminist Praxis: A Rhetorical Repurposing of A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes.” See Muller under Taylor.
Packham, Catherine. “Genre and the Mediation of Political Economy in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men.” Eighteenth Century 60.3 (fall 2019): 249-68. “Burke rewrites recent historical events as fiction or theater; Wollstonecraft exposes the contradictions of his text like an exasperated literary critic, inviting generic comparison to a commentary” (250).
Philp, Mark. Radical Conduct: Politics, Sociability and Equality in London, 1789–1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781108842181. Considers political radicalism from the perspective of conduct and the relationship of the private and the public, with a major focus on William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft throughout (including Godwin’s Memoirs) and only a few passing references to Joseph Johnson.
Shunina, Zoya. “Istoricheskii i pouchitel'nyi obzor proiskhozhdeniya i razvitiya Frantsuzskoi revolyutsii i ee vliyaniya na Evropu Meri Uolstonkraft kak istoricheskii istochnik [An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution and the Effect It Has Produced in Europe by Mary Wollstonecraft as a Historical Source].” Mir i pandemii: transformatsii, kommunikatsii, strategii: materialy Vserossiiskoi nauchnoi konferentsii studentov-stipendiatov Oksfordskogo Rossiiskogo fonda (Ekaterinburg, 25 noyabrya 2020 g.) [World and Pandemics: Transformations, Communications, Strategies: Proceedings of the All-Russian Scientific Conference of Students-Fellows of the Oxford Russian Foundation (Yekaterinburg, 25 November 2020)]. Yekaterinburg, 2021. ISBN: 9785799632465. 324-26. In Russian.
Shunina, Zoya. “‘Ostavlyayu vas s mirom … ,’ pis'mo M. Uolstonkraft G. Imleyu [‘I Leave You in Peace … ,’ a Letter by Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay].” Imagines mundi 5.11 (2021): 39-44. In Russian (abstract in Russian and English). The article includes the first Russian translation of a letter from Wollstonecraft to her lover Imlay, and a commentary.
Siméon, Ophélie. “‘Goddess of reason’: Anna Doyle Wheeler, Owenism and the Rights of Women.” History of European Ideas 47.2 (2021): 285-98. Focuses on Anna Doyle Wheeler, who “fused [Robert] Owen’s co-operative ideals with calls for women’s emancipation” (abstract); includes references to Wollstonecraft.
Slegers, Roos. “The Ethics and Economics of Middle Class Romance: Wollstonecraft and Smith on Love in Commercial Society.” Journal of Ethics 25.4 (Dec. 2021): 525-42. “This article shows the philosophical kinship between Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft on the subject of love” (abstract).
Sokowski, Sandra. “Disciplining Desire and the Problems of Authorship in Denis Diderot’s The Nun and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria: Or, the Wrongs of Woman.” Comparatist 45 (Oct. 2021): 324-46. “These two novels pose important questions regarding the assumptions at this time about women’s writing: what it means for one to write her experience, and how her readers may misinterpret (either willfully or not) her self-representation” (324).
Tomaselli, Sylvana. Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9780691169033. Offers a lucid distillation of Wollstonecraft’s thought, with some biographical and historical context. Slight references to William Roscoe, Henry Fuseli, Joseph Johnson, and Blake.
Reviews
Bergès, Sandrine.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies 29.2 (2021): 251-53. Tomaselli “approaches [Wollstonecraft’s] life and work from unusual angles, casting an altogether different light on what we thought we knew about her subject” (251).
Clare, Isobel.
LSE Review of Books (28 May 2021): 12 pars. “Tomaselli presents Wollstonecraft as many readers will not know her—as a whole person, with passions and flaws, deeply critical philosophies and radical politics” (par. 12).