"MARVELOUS . . . A first-rate biography of an extraordinary man."           --The Wall Street Journal"SUPERB . . . Ackroyd writes with clarity and ease: His book is consistently intelligent, entertaining and affectionate. One closes its pages full of admiration for Blake and eager to study his pictures and read his poetry. . . . Ackroyd emphasizes Blake the visionary Londoner, like Turner or Dickens, and convincingly relates the poet's work to the social upheavals of his time. . . . Above all, [he] makes Blake live for the modern reader." --The Washington Post Book World                      "LYRICAL AND ILLUMINATING . . .  Ackroyd is a masterly storyteller and interpreter of Blake's writing and art."  --Chicago Tribune "THE WORK OF A WRITER AT THE PEAK OF HIS LITERARY POWERS . . . It is one of the great strengths of Ackroyd's writing that he reminds us that every individual life and cast of mind has a tradition behind it, a context of other lives and minds which is half forgotten or not remembered at all. As a writer, he is always letting his bucket deeper and deeper down the historical well." --The New Yorker