Blake: A Biography.

William Blake's visions pose a problem in a secular age. Were those conversations with his angels poetic imagination? Or insanity? In this luminous biography of a luminous spirit, Ackroyd differentiates mysticism from madness and posits Blake as a visionary out of step with the Age of Reason.

As a verbally and artistically precocious child, Blake saw God's face in his window. He apprenticed as a draughtsman, trained at the Royal Academy, and spent his life laboring over plates and presses, producing 580 commercial engravings. He was never widely esteemed as a creative artist, and his recondite poems of biblical proportions and his fantastical, Michelangelo-inspired figures were commercial failures; his few friends and patrons found projects to keep him out of the workhouse. With a restraint that underscores the tragedy, Ackroyd portrays the domestic details (Blake made tea each morning for his devoted wife, Catherine, who receives her due as his most essential angel) and the slow slide into deeper poverty. Blake died as he lived, singing hymns. George Richmond closed Blake's eyes to "keep the vision in."

Insightful exegeses of the poems and engravings appear throughout (particularly fine are chapters on The Chimney Sweep and The Ancient of Days). The craft and physical labor involved in printing, and the effects and influences on Blake's artistry are examined, with parallels drawn between Blake's visual and literary styles. The volume is lavishly and intelligently illustrated; end matter is similarly estimable.

Ackroyd, distinguished by his novels and biographies of T.S.Eliot and Dickens, has surpassed himself here, and his affinity with his subject illumines the text. This comprehensive, affectionate, and impeccably researched biography of Blake is simply the finest now available, and undoubtedly will remain so for many years to come. It is an extraordinary achievement.

Johanna Keller