Visions of Blake

Reviews / Votes

Reviews'One of the defining books on Blake's reception - a sheer pleasure to read. Trodd's comprehensive research at last provides us with an understanding of Blake's influence on the art world in the century after his death to match our knowledge of his influence on literature.'

Jason Whittaker '[T]his wonderful book is a long overdue addition; it not only fills a gap in the existing works on Blake's art, but is also an important milestone in the recent interest taken in Blake's literary reception ... Trodd makes a number of thought-provoking observations ... [and] undertakes a commanding case study of the body of Newton ... William Blake's pervasive cultural presence and status as controversial and innovative painter in Victorian and Edwardian art criticism cannot be doubted. Trodd's beautiful and carefully researched book offers an amazing range of interconnected opinions about Blake's achievements and failures as a painter. Blake was an outsider, and it is truly fascinating that his art has spawned so many responses by so many different commentators. This book highlights the varying perceptions of Blake's personality and artistic outputs- his going in and out of fashion-and encourages us to speculate about the reasons behind publishing his poetry with or without images, beyond what was technologically feasible. Trodd's exuberant and elegant prose guides us through a mass of material (books, catalogues, essays, journal articles, reviews, letters, artworks, initiatives), supplying long lists of names as well as compact footnotes; his work abounds with interesting detail and information about Blake's critical afterlife.'

Sibylle Erle, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 'Colin Trodd's Visions of Blake: William Blake in the Art World 1830-1930, a substantial discussion of a large topic, offers further proof that Blakean adaptation remains an unusually busy area for scholars. One of the values of the book is that it is not confined simply to Blake's admirers, who too often cast themselves as proudly lonely in their unique capacity to understand Blake in a world that won't listen. There was, Trodd demonstrates, a lively, various public debate about Blake amongst artists, academics, curators, and the public. Trodd offers remarkably well-informed discussions of Blake's works, Victorian and Edwardian painting, criticism, curatorial practice, and aesthetic theory as it was discussed in periodicals and elsewhere. This is a highly impressive achievement, and will be a point of reference for Blakeans and scholars of Victorian and Edwardian art for many years.'
The Year's Work in English Studies 'Colin Trodd's long and deeply thoughtful study ... is particularly good on the anomaly of Blake's epic subject matter and miniature scale ... There are many wondrous things in Visions of Blake as the idea of art and the artist break down under his fierce questioning to reveal the shifting needs of a culture redefining itself. Trodd ... offers not only tour de force readings of works by Blake ... but also extended discussions of works that seem to Trodd to share qualities with Blake's art ...There's a wonderful discussion of Frederic Shields's William Blake's Work-room and Death-room... In Visions of Blake, Trodd turns reception studies into something new.'

Victorian Studies 'In an extensive, indeed thoroughly exhaustive, study, Colin Trodd returns proper attention to what was the primary sphere of Blake's reputation until the early years of the twentieth century, as a visual artist whose frequently disturbing inspiration was an important contributing factor to the development of the arts in Britain. Much more than a simple historical survey, Trodd's book presents an extremely sophisticated account of what he terms 'Blakeland', which is sensitive to the shifting nuances of Blake's reception from one decade to the next ... Throughout, Trodd's scholarship is exemplary and his criticism is extremely carefully argued.'

Visual Culture in Britain