Blake

"MARVELOUS . . . A first-rate biography of an extraordinary man." --The Wall Street Journal "SUPERB . . . Ackroyd writes with clarity and ease: His book is consistently intelligent entertaining and affectionate. One closes its pages full of admiration for Blake and eager to study his pictures and read his poetry. . . . Ackroyd emphasizes Blake the visionary Londoner like Turner or Dickens and convincingly relates the poets work to the social upheavals of his time. . . . Above all he makes Blake live for the modern reader." --The Washington Post Book World "LYRICAL AND ILLUMINATING . . . Ackroyd is a masterly storyteller and interpreter of Blakes writing and art." --Chicago Tribune "THE WORK OF A WRITER AT THE PEAK OF HIS LITERARY POWERS . . . It is one of the great strengths of Ackroyds writing that he reminds us that every individual life and cast of mind has a tradition behind it a context of other lives and minds which is half forgotten or not remembered at all. As a writer he is always letting his bucket deeper and deeper down the historical well." --The New Yorker