About the Society

 The Blake Society was founded at St. James's Piccadilly to honour &
celebrate William Blake, engraver, poet, painter & prophet. It aims to
attract everyone with an interest in Blake. The Society encourages a
greater appreciation of William Blake's remarkable artistic achievement
through regular meetings with eminent speakers; exploring the myths
surrounding his writing; & raising the profile of Blake's verse.

Blake's appeal has been extraordinarily wide. Every schoolchild encounters
"The Lamb" & "The Tyger" & most people know a few of his pictures & lyric
poems, & also that he wrote the anthem: "And did those feet in ancient
time". Born at Broad Street, Soho, in 1757, the son of shopkeepers, &
baptised at St James's, Piccadilly, Blake grew up & lived almost all his
life in London. He had no schooling but had a thirst for knowledge. William
Blake's life spanned an age of great social & intellectual ferment. Besides
being a prolific poet & artist who created his own mythology, he was also a
satirist, radical & visionary, with ideas astonishingly ahead of his time.
He died in London, at Fountain Court, Strand, in 1827. He is still a
challenge & an inspiration.

Events & Projects:
Lectures by major scholars
Seminars, discussions & debates
Readings & performances of his poetry & other writing
Providing a focus for the study & appreciation of Blake in the London he
knew. In celebration of the imagination, the Society invites artist,
writers, radicals & mystics to participate in all our projects.
 We are a serious but not a stuffy group. Our Society brings scholars &
enthusiasts, amateurs & professionals together on equal terms to study &
celebrate the genius of William Blake. We have been meeting regularly in
London since 1986, with monthly speakers, including many of the most
eminent scholars in the field of Blake studies.

We publish our Blake Journal once a year. Major libraries & educational
institutions recognise the Journal as an important source for Blake
studies. The journal is free to members.

If you would like to be on our membership mailing list (& receive our
regular Journal), please write to Andrew Vernède, Membership Secretary, The
Blake Society at St. James's, 197 Piccadilly, London W1V 0LL enclosing £10
(£5 concessions). Please make cheques payable to "The Blake Society".

Where we meet:
City of Westminster Archives Centre
10 St Ann's Street London SW1P 2XR

Underground station : St James's Park (District & Circle Lines)
Railway Station : Victoria
Buses : 11, 24, 211 along Victoria Street; 88 along Great Smith Street; 507
along Horseferry Road.





Collage by Jason Whitaker.
 The Blake Society Programme for 2001

 Wednesday January 17
Annual General Meeting
Old & new members of the Society are warmly invited to our AGM.  This is
your chance to say how you think the Society should develop.
City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St.Ann's Street, London SW1P 2XR;
7.30 p.m.

Tuesday February 6
PETER OTTO
"An ancient phallic religion": Knight, Swedenborg, & Blake's iconography of
the phallus in The Four Zoas.
Peter Otto teaches courses on Romanticism, Gothic Fictions, & Romanticism
and Modernity in the English Department at the University of Melbourne
(Australia). He is currently working on an Australian Research
Council-funded project that focuses on relations between Romanticism,
Mesmerism & Millenarianism. He is also co-editing a major collection of
Gothic Fictions for the microfilm publisher Adam Matthews. Other research
interests include the relation between romanticism & contemporary culture.
He has co-edited two collections of articles on Romanticism & authored two
books on William Blake - Constructive Vision and Visionary Deconstruction
(Oxford UP, 1991) & Blake's Critique of Transcendence (Oxford UP, 2000).
City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St.Ann's Street, London SW1P 2XR;
7.30 p.m.

Wednesday March 21
PETER COCHRAN
Joint meeting with the Byron Society
Further details to follow.

Tuesday April 17
DAVID BINDMAN
Reclaiming Blake as a Painter.
David Bindman is Durning-Lawrence Professor of the History of Art in the
University of London & teaches courses mainly on British 18th century and
European Romantic art, specialising in caricature & the history of
printmaking, & questions of national and racial identity.  He was educated
at Oxford, Harvard & London universities & has taught frequently in the
US.  He has written several books & articles on William Hogarth & William
Blake & on the British response to the French revolution (Shadow of the
Guillotine, 1989), & on the sculptors Roubiliac & Flaxman.  He is currently
working on a book provisionally entitled Ape to Apollo: aesthetics, human
variety and race in the 18th century for Reaktion Books, & on a major loan
exhibition for Tate Britain on British identity in the 18th century.
City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St.Ann's Street, London SW1P 2XR;
7.30 p.m.

Tuesday May 22
ANNE MELLOR
William Blake, Joanna Southcott & the Gendering of Apocalyptic Thinking.
Anne K. Mellor is Distinguished Professor of English & Women's Studies at
the University of California in Los Angeles. She is the author of many
books & scholarly articles on British Romanticism, including Blake's Human
Form Divine (1974), English Romantic Irony (1980), Mary Shelley: Her Life,
Her Fiction, Her Monsters (1988), Romanticism and Gender (1993), & Mothers
Of The Nation: Women's Political Writing In England, 1780-1830 (2000). She
has received numerous scholarly honours, including two Guggenheim
Fellowships & the Keats-Shelley Association's Distinguished Scholar Award.
City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St.Ann's Street, London SW1P 2XR;
7.30 p.m.

Tuesday June 19
ROSIE PAICE
"Art Degraded Imagination Denied War Governed the Nations": William Blake's
Laocoön Engraving.
Rosie Paice writes: "I am currently in my third & final year of doctorate
study at the University of Manchester, for which my subject is Blake's
so-called Laocoön engraving, its sources, & contexts within Blake's oeuvre,
& the literature & art of the time. I also teach on the Romantic Literature
& Victorian Literature courses within the University, which I thoroughly
enjoy, & feel very strongly to be an integral part of any academic career.
I hope to pursue such a career on completing my Ph.D. At the time of going
to print, my publications number only one: "Blake and a 'curious
hypothesis'," Notes & Queries 245:3 (Sept. 2000). I have, however, given
several conference & seminar papers, both on Blake's works, & on Napoleonic
& anti-Napoleonic fictions."
City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St.Ann's Street, London SW1P 2XR;
7.30 p.m.




Keri Davies, Secretary
The Blake Society at St.James's
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