Blake, Nation and Empire

Blake, Nation and Empire challenges the orthodoxy of the politics of William Blake as exclusively radical, defined by his participation in the revolutionary ferment of the 1790s. It examines his work in the context of emergent discourses of nation and empire, and of the construction of a public sphere, and restores the longevity to his artistic career by placing particular emphasis on his output in the 1820s. Relevant contexts include technology, sentimentalism, Ireland and Catholic Emancipation, missionary prospectuses and body politics. Blake's work is shown not only to be complexly embedded in the culture of his time but also to prefigure and contest the imperial century of pax Britannica.