William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love

‘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 ‘A triumph, as strange, unclassifiable and awe-inspiring as the man at its beating heart’ Malcolm Forbes, Wall Street Journal ‘A dazzlingly written and wildly eccentric mashup of biography, history and memoir … Hoare picks up the pieces and rearranges them in a dazzling new pattern, and the result is one of the most original and uncategorisable works I’ve read for a long time’ Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Times ‘An appropriately ecstatic, kaleidoscopic and intimately vast engagement with our great and practical visionary’ Geoff Dyer, New Statesman ‘William Blake 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’ Literary Review ‘Hoare's version of a Blake print, a meandering, undulating reverie … A book to dive into and get lost in; you might find a new world while you are at it’ Christoph Irmscher, Art Newspaper ‘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 ‘A Blakean universe replete with fairies and spirits, butterflies and stars, sacred monsters and hermaphrodites … Endearingly intimate’ Kirkus Review 'Everything exists at once: horror, stars, trees, art, love, and it's up to us to behold it all. Which is exactly what Philip Hoare does … He really sets out to behold it all’ Helena de Groot, Poetry Foundation