Blake, Sexuality and Bourgeois Politeness

Susan Matthews is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Roehampton University.

• Introduction; 1. 'Happy copulation': visual enthusiasm and the sexual gaze; 2. Fuseli and the 'female dream' of Europe; 3. A history of softness: William Hayley and the triumphs of temper; 4. The essay on old maids and the learned lady; 5. Cowper's fear: nature, population, apocalypse; 6. Blake reads Richardson: anthologies, annotation and cultures of reading; 7. A 'blank in nature': Blake and cultures of mourning; 8. Adultery at the turn of the century.

'Matthews' book is a fierce, fascinating, and passionate response to the last thirty years in Blake studies; it revisits the debates initiated by the feminists to claim that Blake's opinion of both gender and sexuality can only make sense if firmly placed into their historical linguistic context. Matthews successfully carves out a new area of investigation and convincingly presents a new Blake.' Sibylle Erle, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly