William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love
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William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love by Philip Hoare
Named a BOOK OF THE YEAR by The Times and Sunday Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Prospect, and New Yorker.
‘Undoubtedly Hoare’s masterpiece’ Olivia Laing
‘Queer in all senses of the word’ Neil Tennant
‘A life-changing book’ Robert Douglas Fairhurst, The Times
‘Fabulously idiosyncratic’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman
How one visionary inspired 200 years of art, poetry, and protest.
Weaving between the historical, cultural and personal, award-winning author Philip Hoare reveals a web of creative minds and artistic iconoclasts fired with the wild and revolutionary genius of William Blake.
In 1973, Derek Jarman set off from London to film the stones of Avebury. He was following in the footsteps of Paul Nash, who had photographed the ancient megaliths a generation before. Standing in that muddy field, by those stones, both artists had felt a direct connection to their hero – a man who had died a long, long time ago, yet who remained electrically alive to them.
In this alluring and poetic odyssey, Philip Hoare traces the enduring legacy of William Blake and how he came to inspire so many creative lives. Reaching out of his past and into our future, Blake draws together the natural world and metaphysical realms, merging the human and the animal and the spiritual, firing up twentieth-century artists, filmmakers, poets, writers and musicians with his radical promise of absolute freedom. This stirring, deeply felt book brings us back to Blake and shows that art still has the power to create positive change.
‘A book that is neither Blake biography nor critical analysis nor legacy-tracing nor personal odyssey but a capacious mixing of them all … a joyful and dizzying romp’ Philip Marsden, Spectator
‘This love letter to William Blake couldn’t be more eccentric … Philip Hoare’s weird and wonderful style soars in this study of the poet and his disciples’ Ian Sansom, Telegraph
‘Hoare’s impassioned style, alive with metaphor and wordplay, has often been called “dreamlike”. This is apt, given his total immersion in his subject … Nothing will be as audacious or intriguing as William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love’ Jenny Uglow, Times Literary Supplement
‘Prepare to be confused, dazzled and amazed: it’s a poetic fever dream of a book … It’s not just a book about Blake: it’s a Blakean book’ Ian Sansom, Telegraph
‘Each of Hoare’s subjects is affected with a certain wildness, a loosening of societal norms that makes for expressive beauty and eccentricity, giving the author a host of colourful and hyper-connected anecdotesIn doing so, they make him a part of the very tradition he is recording, his own work here reaching ecstatic heights, his prose filled with moments of sudden clarity, his life and passions glimpsed’ Philip Marsden, Spectator
‘This wild, dreaming leviathan of a book is undoubtedly Hoare’s masterpiece … It is a mesmerising tapestry, intricate, strange and very queer, that ranges through time and space’ Olivia Laing, author of The Garden Against Time
‘Wild, free, exhilaratingly beautiful, and so alive to the past that everyone and everything seems to be happening right now on the page. I cannot think of a more original writer at work today … To look at English art through his eyes is to see more than you ever could before’ Laura Cumming, author of Thunderclap
‘An impassioned magnum opus celebrating Blake's star-shaken genius by discovering his lineage everywhere in the author’s own crystal cabinet of artists and outlaws. A tremendous literary performance’ Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London
‘William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love is obviously, and winningly, animated by the overpowering excitement that the author feels when he encounters the works of William Blake … Hoare’s passion for Blake is a marvellous thing, as is his admiration for Nash’ Literary Review
‘An exuberant romp … [Hoare] examines a Blakean universe replete with fairies and spirits, butterflies and stars, sacred monsters and hermaphrodites. Sometimes maddeningly digressive, Hoare’s history is, nonetheless, endearingly intimate. Abundantly illustrated. An imaginative response to an enigmatic artist’ Kirkus Review
Philip Hoare is the author of ten books, including Leviathan, or the Whale, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He lives on the south coast of England and swims every day in the sea.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780008534349 |
| ISBN 10 | 0008534349 |
| Title | William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love |
| Author | Philip Hoare |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 2025-04-10 |
| Number of pages | 464 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |