Jason Whittaker, Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake

Abstract

Divine Images is a thorough introduction to Blake’s work and a guide to understanding it, written for an audience unfamiliar with the necessary context. Students will find it immensely useful, and even seasoned readers of Blake will appreciate the succinct survey of his life, poetry, and visual art. The balance between his life, the relevant history around him, and an overview of all of his major works marks Divine Images as distinct from biographies, such as Tobias Churton’s Jerusalem! The Real Life of William Blake (2014), and guides to reading Blake, such as Saree Makdisi’s Reading William Blake (2015) and Kathryn S. Freeman’s A Guide to the Cosmology of William Blake (2017). Whittaker’s book is neither an account of minute details of Blake’s life nor a survey of themes that his work addresses nor a dictionary of his symbols. This exploration of Blake in context perhaps most distinguishes itself by heavily emphasizing the visual aspects of his career.