Philip Hoare's latest book sees Blake inspire an army of admirers from Wilde and Joyce through to David Bowie. Minor characters like W. G. Robertson and Mary Butts shine... but there's more. When so many friends of Blake are keen to scale him down to the size of an increasingly familiar Blake-with-stabilisers, Hoare invokes a wilder, far less predictable spirit - though a far more plausible inspiration for the parade of talent Hoare ushers into the Blakean spotlight from one generation to the next
A very stimulating appraisal. I have the book myself, although I’ve not started it (purchased near St Ives, where, as it happens, I saw the Ithell Colquhoun exhibition). The “artist” Butts married is John Rodker, I think. Carcanet published his collected writings (pretty slim volume) back in the ‘90s. https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857540604/poems-and-adolphe-1920/
A very stimulating appraisal. I have the book myself, although I’ve not started it (purchased near St Ives, where, as it happens, I saw the Ithell Colquhoun exhibition). The “artist” Butts married is John Rodker, I think. Carcanet published his collected writings (pretty slim volume) back in the ‘90s. https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857540604/poems-and-adolphe-1920/
I see that Rodker's father made whalebone corsets. Philip Hoare would have liked that.
I note too that Rodker was the official agent of the Soviet literary agency!