This morning I arrived at my desk intending to read Thackeray's Barry Lyndon (1844), expecting some rollick, swash and buckle as counterpoint to the intensity of the last week when I negotiated both Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Walter Scott's Rob Roy. Both are heavy didactic texts dealing with identity, society and "the right thing" to do in life. By chance I saw a reference to Blake's Vala or the Four Zoas when looking at a hypertext essay that was linked to an email I had opened.....I then picked up the fat and red "The Poems of William Blake" that sits on my shelf awaiting its place in the queue of my reading list for the 19th century. I remember reading Blake some years ago but not getting far beyond "Tyger Tyger Burning Bright". Today, since opening the book 3 hours ago I have not moved from it...Incredible. It has the feeling of entering a space or indeed a whole universe that I have not experienced since Milton's Paradise Lost. I think I shall remain there for as long as my busy reading schedule allows.
Blake is well represented on the web:
The William Blake Archive
The Complete Poetry and Prose
The Urizen Books of William Blake
A Glossary of Terms, Names, and Concepts in Blake
THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
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