learned analysis with a warm and conversational style. 'Wise and original.'-Rosie Schaap, New York Times Magazine Scores of illustrations and color plates give us a small portion of Blake’s countless prints, engravings and watercolor designs, and his career is treated with admirable fullness.'-William Pritchard, Wall Street Journal to be introductory in the best sense: 'to help nonspecialists appreciate Blake’s profoundly original vision and. an attractive hint of a secret passion an unusual sense of ease and intimacy with Blake’s work.'-Michael Wood, New York Times Book Review The book is an invitation to understanding and enjoyment, an invitation to appreciate Blake’s imaginative world and, in so doing, to open the doors of our perception. The author’s goal is to inspire the reader with the passion he has for his subject, achieving the imaginative response that Blake himself sought to excite. He believed that we live in the midst of Eternity here and now, and that if we could open our consciousness to the fullness of being, it would be like experiencing a sunrise that never ends.įollowing Blake’s life from beginning to end, acclaimed biographer Leo Damrosch draws extensively on Blake’s poems, his paintings, and his etchings and engravings to offer this generously illustrated account of Blake the man and his vision of our world. He was a counterculture prophet whose art still challenges us to think afresh about almost every aspect of experience-social, political, philosophical, religious, erotic, and aesthetic. Out of a wounding sense of alienation and dividedness he created a profoundly original symbolic language, in which words and images unite in a unique interpretation of self and society. William Blake, overlooked in his time, remains an enigmatic figure to contemporary readers despite his near canonical status.

In this richly illustrated portrait, a prize-winning biographer surveys the entire sweep of William Blake’s creative work while telling the story of his life

Eternity's Sunrise by Leo Damrosch