Blake in Our Time
Essays in Honour of G.E. Bentley, Jr.

Karen Mulhallen (Edited by)

9781442641518

Hardback, published 30 June 2010

296 pages, 30 halftones; 1 table
23.6 x 16.1 x 2.6 cm, 0.66 kg

‘Blake in Our Time is a magnificent tribute to G. E. Bentley, Jr.-one of the titans in Blake studies of the last, as well as current, century-whose work has “shifted the focus of Blake criticism from formalism and symbolism to the ‘Minute Particulars’ of Blake’s life and work,”’ - Joseph Wittreich (Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly vol 46:03:2012-13)

Blake in Our Time explores the work of British poet and artist William Blake in the context of the material culture of his era. In the 1960s, University of Toronto scholar G.E. Bentley, Jr almost singlehandedly shifted the focus of Blake criticism from formalism and symbolism to the materiality that contextualizes Blake's work.

Following in the footsteps of Bentley's pioneering scholarship, this collection, richly illustrated, demonstrates that the locus of Blake's work lies in the elements that are historically particular to his place and time. Topics include the impact of the town of Chichester on Blake's imagination, the material processes of Blake's painting, the detection of a Blake forgery, and new biographical materials, using archives and online resources, on Blake's contemporaries, patrons, peers, and friends. Essays on the importance of Blake collections world-wide, on variant printings, and on the heirs of Blake in British painting extend the focus of this remarkable investigation to include chalcography and book history.

1. Collecting Blake by Robert N. Essick (University of California, Riverside)


2. Two Fake Blakes Revisited; One Dew-Smith Revealed by Joseph Viscomi (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)


3. Blake's Painting Materials, Technical Art History, and the Legacy of G.E. Bentley Jr by Joyce H. Townsend and Bronwyn A. Ormsby (Tate Gallery, London)

PART 2: "For Friendship's Sake": Friends and Patrons

1. New Light on the Mathews: Flaxman and Blake's Early Gothicism by David Bindman (University College London)


2. "A Ladys Book": Blake's Engravings for Hayley's The Triumphs of Temper by Mark Crosby (Queen's University, Belfast)


3. More on Blake's (and Bentley's) 'White Collar Maecenus': Thomas Butts, His Wife's Family of Artisans, and the Methodist Withams of St Bartholomew the Great by Mary Lynn Johnson (University of Iowa)


4. "Went to see Blake - also to Surgeons college": Blake and George Cumberland's Pocketbooks by Angus Whitehead (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)


5. George Richmond, Blake's True Heir? by Martin Butlin (Tate Gallery, London

PART 3: "What I Both See and Hear": Architecture and Industry

1. William Blake and Chichester by Morton D. Paley (University of California, Berkeley)


2. William Blake and the Straw Paper Manufactory at Millbank by Keri Davies (The Blake Society)

Epilogue: A Memorable Fancy by Jerome McGann (University of Virginia)

Appendix: William Blake in Toronto: The Bentley Collection at Victoria University Library by Robert Brandeis (Victoria University in the University of Toronto)