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Host Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr Hannah Nicholson and comedian Catherine Bohart as they head to the polls to discover the early history of general elections.

You're Dead To Me returns for a special episode on The History of General Elections. Welcome to the world of "bludgeon men", "potwallopers", and electorates of sheep (!). Travel back to the 18th Century, when Number 10 was number 5 (yes, really) and discover not just how voter rights have changed, but where they originated. Host Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr Hannah Nicholson and comedian Catherine Bohart.

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BBC Radio 4 - You're Dead To Me, The History of General Elections

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Host Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr Hannah Nicholson and comedian Catherine Bohart as they head to the polls to discover the early history of general elections. You're Dead To Me returns for a special episode on The History of General Elections. Welcome to the world of "bludgeon men", "potwallopers", and electorates of sheep (!).

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This might help you choose a novel for your prose study. Your choice must also be approved by the Literature Department.

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1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes
The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries.
* Harold Bloom on Don Quixote - the first modern novel

5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding
The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.
* Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Tom Jones

6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson
One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.
* Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Clarissa

8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.
* Jason Cowley on the many incarnations of Dangerous Liaisons

22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
You could summarise this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely.
* Julian Barnes rewrites the ending to Madame Bovary
* The Everest of translation, by Adam Thorpe

23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and mental cruelty.
* The Woman in White's 150 years of sensation

24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll
A story written for the nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids.
* Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mystical tragedy by the author of Crime and Punishment.
* Stuart Jeffries on the incorrect title
In Pictures: Readers suggest the 10 best long reads
Author snapshot: Fyodor Dostoevky

30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and polished best.
* Profound and flawed: Claire Messud on rereading The Portrait of a Lady
* Hermione Lee on the biography of a novel that changed literature

34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
A coded and epigrammatic melodrama inspired by his own tortured homosexuality.
* Fiona MacCarthy on the inspiration behind The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Picture of Dorian Gray

35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith
This classic of Victorian suburbia will always be renowned for the character of Mr Pooter.
Buy The Diary of a Nobody at the Guardian Bookshop

60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett
Part of a trilogy of astonishing monologues in the black comic voice of the author of Waiting for Godot.
* Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Murphy (the first part of the trilogy)
* Keith Ridgway rereads his favourite Beckett
* Peter Conrad and Philip Hensher review the Collected Letters, vols 1 and 2

61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
A week in the life of Holden Caulfield. A cult novel that still mesmerises.
* Ten things you should know about The Catcher in the Rye
* Stephen Bates on the possible sequel to The Catcher in the Rye
* David Barnett offers his take on the controversy
* Anne Roiphen rereads Salinger's novel

64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
Enough said!
* Claire Armitstead remembers reading The Lord of the Rings in Lagos
* Visuals: The Lord of the Rings family tree and demographics chart
* Sarah Crown's guide to The Lord of the Rings

65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
An astonishing debut: the painfully funny English novel of the Fifties.
* Olivia Laing on not reading Amis on the bus
* John Mullan analyses Lucky Jim for the Guardian Book Club
* John Crace "digests" Lucky Jim for the Guardian Podcast

71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
Nigeria at the beginning of colonialism. A classic of African literature.
* Read the first page of Achebe's great novel here
* Nadine Gordimer remembers Achebe
* Chinua Achebe in pictures

75. Herzog Saul Bellow
Adultery and nervous breakdown in Chicago.
* Alex Clark reviews Bellow's short stories
* John Crace 'digests' Herzog
* James Wood on Saul Bellow

79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
The definitive novelist of the African-American experience.
* Take the Toni Morrison quiz
* Morrison on America, by Rachel Cooke
*Read interviews with Morrison here and here

85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and light, about three generations of women.
* Notes to Self: Robinson and others look back on their work
* Read Emma Brockes's interviews here
* Marilynne Robinson talks to Robert McCrum
* John Mullan on Housekeeping

95. LA Confidential James Ellroy
Three LAPD detectives are brought face to face with the secrets of their corrupt and violent careers.
* Hear Ellroy talk about the first novel in his LA quartet on the Guardian Books Podcast
* Read a short interview with Ellroy here

96. Wise Children Angela Carter
A theatrical extravaganza by a brilliant exponent of magic realism.
* Read an extract from Susannah Clapp's memoir of Carter
* Kit Buchan's piece on Wise Children for the Families in Literature series

97. Atonement Ian McEwan
Acclaimed short-story writer achieves a contemporary classic of mesmerising narrative conviction.
* Read the first chapter online
* John Mullan writes on the weather in Atonement for the Guardian Book Club
* John Sutherland's interview with the author can be found here
* Geoff Dyer is won over by Atonement, while Nick Lezard is less sure

98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman
Lyra's quest weaves fantasy, horror and the play of ideas into a truly great contemporary children's book.
* Baddies in Books: Mrs Coulter might just be the mother of all evil
* Northern Lights named the 'Carnegie of Carnegies'

* Read Kate Kellaway's interview with Philip Pullman
Who did we miss?
So, are you congratulating yourself on having read everything on our list or screwing the newspaper up into a ball and aiming it at the nearest bin?

Are you wondering what happened to all those American writers from Bret Easton Ellis to Jeffrey Eugenides, from Jonathan Franzen to Cormac McCarthy?

Have women been short-changed? Should we have included Pat Barker, Elizabeth Bowen, A.S. Byatt, Penelope Fitzgerald, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch?

What's happened to novels in translation such as Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Hesse's Siddhartha, Mishima's The Sea of Fertility, Süskind's Perfume and Zola's Germinal?

Writers such as JG Ballard, Julian Barnes, Anthony Burgess, Bruce Chatwin, Robertson Davies, John Fowles, Nick Hornby, Russell Hoban, Somerset Maugham and VS Pritchett narrowly missed the final hundred. Were we wrong to lose them?

Let us know what you think. Post your own suggestions for the 100 best books on the Observer blog.

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The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list

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1. Don Quixote Miguel De CervantesThe story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries. * Harold Bloom on Don Quixote - the first modern novel 5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.

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The Children who built Victorian Britain Part I

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The Children who built Victorian Britain Part I

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The Industrial Revolution in England and child labour.

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The Children Who Built Victorian Britain Part 1

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The Children who built Victorian Britain Part II

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The Children who built Victorian Britain Part II

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The Children Who Built Victorian Britain Part 2

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The Children who built Victorian Britain Part III

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The Children who built Victorian Britain Part III

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The Children Who Built Victorian Britain Part 3

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Tudor, English and black – and not a slave in sight

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From musicians to princes, a new book by historian Miranda Kaufmann opens a window on the hitherto unknown part played by black people in 16th-century England

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The Storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789

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English Education in the Victorian Era (Great Expectations)

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hen I was very young, some gay friends of mine threw a cross-dressing party. My boyfriend at the time, with the help of his mother, did so well that a lot of straight men were unnerved; they needed to know that the lust-inspiring, simpering siren in the tight slip was not compromising their heterosexuality. I was not nearly so convincing as a Rod Stewart-ish man with charcoal five o'clock shadow, and I was a little taken aback to realise that, to me, impersonating a man meant manspreading on the sofa, belching and scratching personal parts, glowering and cursing. There was a sense of not having to please anyone and not having to be likable that was fun, but it wasn't necessarily someone I wanted to be.

I am old enough that girls weren't allowed to wear trousers to school until midway through my elementary school education; that I remember a local newspaper columnist arguing in a grumpy panic that if women wore trousers gender would vanish, which he saw as a terrifying thing. I have worn jeans and shoes that are good for rough terrain for most of my life, along with lipstick and long hair, and being a woman has let me walk this line between what used to be considered masculine and feminine. But I have wondered from time to time what life would be like if I were a man. By this I don't mean to aspire to, or appropriate, or suffer from gender dysphoria and the deeper issues around bodies, sexuality and sense of self that trans people contend with.

I like a lot of things about being a woman, but there are times and ways it's a prison, and sometimes I daydream about being out of that prison. I know that being a man can be a prison in other ways. I know and love a lot of men, straight and gay, and I see burdens they're saddled with that I'm glad not to carry. There are all the things men are not supposed to do and say and feel; the constant patrol on boys to prevent them from or punish them for doing anything inconsistent with conventions of heterosexual masculinity, those boys for whom, in their formative years, faggot and pussy - being not straight or not male - are still often the most sneering of epithets.

Perhaps as a girl, I was liberated by expectations that I'd be some variation on a failure. I could rebel by succeeding

Back in the 1970s, when some men were figuring out how their own liberation might parallel women's liberation, there was a demonstration at which guys held a banner that said, "Men are more than just success objects." Perhaps as a girl, I was liberated by expectations that I'd be some variation on a failure. I could rebel by succeeding, while a lot of white middle-class men of my era seemed to rebel by failing, because the expectations had been set so very high for them. That had the upside of more support, sometimes, for their endeavours, but the downside of more pressure and higher expectations. They were supposed to grow up to be president, or their mother's pride and joy, or their family's sole support, or a hero every day - to somehow do remarkable things; being ordinary, decent and hardworking was often regarded as not enough. But success was available to them, and that was an advantage - and still is. We still have wild disproportions on those fronts; the New York Times reported in 2015 that "Fewer large companies are run by women than by men named John". Among the top firms in the US, "for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James".

Back when my mother was alive and well, I used to joke that my problem was that I was a perfect son. What my mother expected from me was, as far as I could tell, profoundly different from what she expected from her three sons. I used to joke that they were supposed to fix her roof; I was supposed to fix her psyche. She wanted something impossible from me, some combination of best friend confidante, nurturer, and person she could dump on about anything at any time - a person who would never disagree or depart. She lived about 20 miles north of San Francisco, where I've lived since I was 18, and I was willing to show up regularly, including holidays, Mother's Day and her birthday, bring gifts, listen, be helpful in practical ways, while carrying on with my own life (I'd left home and become financially independent at 17).

As it was, she resented the opportunities I had that she felt she had not, starting with college, which she was not encouraged to go to, unlike her brother. This resentment is common, I think, between her generation and mine, and in some ways she saw my career as disrupting my proper role as her caregiver, or as a caregiver generally. I knew that the acceptable escape from being devoted to her was to devote my life to some other people - to get a husband, to have kids - rather than to be unavailable because I was working and living my own life. When I was young, she would recite to me the couplet "A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life." In her expectations was an undertone of: I have sacrificed my life to others; sacrifice yours to me.

I'm not a sacrifice, but my work was a source of conflict for others as well. I started college early, graduated early, went onward to the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where I took a degree just before I turned 23, worked for a magazine, left the magazine and inadvertently found myself a freelance writer, which is largely how I've earned my living these past three decades. I published a book at 30, and then another one - 20 to date.

Photograph: John Lee/The Guardian

Early on in my friendship with an older feminist writer who has written many influential books, we used to laugh about the guys we met who were upset that we had published so much. They seemed to feel that they had to be more successful than whoever they were attracted to; that somehow our creative work was an act of aggression or competition. I don't think women approach men the same way (though a novelist once told me his ex-wife made him feel like a race horse she was betting on). We joked, "If I knew I was going to meet you I would have burned the manuscripts." Or as I'd laugh later, "Do you think this book makes my brain look big?" Boys can be stigmatised as nerds and geeks, but they can't really be too smart. Girls can, and a lot of girls learn to hide their intelligence, or just abandon or devalue or doubt it. Having strong opinions and clear ideas is incompatible with being flatteringly deferential.

What is confidence in a man is too often viewed as competitiveness in a woman; what is leadership in a man is bossiness in a woman; even the word bossy, like slut or nag, is seldom applied to men. A few decades ago, I knew a woman who was a world champion martial artist. Her husband's family was disconcerted by the fact that he could not beat her up. They did not suppose he wanted to, but they presumed he was somehow emasculated by not being able to, by the fact that she did not make him feel mighty in this abominable way. He himself, to his credit, did not seem to give a damn.

As a girl, I would have liked to have my intelligence and intellectual labours regarded as an unmitigated good and a source of pride, rather than something I had to handle delicately, lest I upset or offend. Success can contain implicit failure for straight women, who are supposed to succeed as women by making men feel godlike in their might. As Virginia Woolf reflected: "Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size."

I have met a lot of brilliant men whose spouses serve their careers and live in their shadows, and marrying a successful man is still considered the pinnacle of women's achievement in many circles. Some of those women flourished, but not a few seemed diminished by their role as helpmeet and handmaiden, and if they got divorced, they divorced the identity they'd helped build and maintain. There have been so many women who stayed at home and raised the kids while men went off on adventures and pursued accomplishments. There still are. These straight men with brilliant careers and families - no one asks them how they manage to have it all, because we know: she's how.

Ms Magazine's first issue in 1972 published a landmark essay titled Why I Want A Wife. It's an appalling list of all the things a wife might do for her husband and children, of a woman as a sort of self-managed servant. Even recently, one of my best friends told me he's taken aback at the smiles-and-compliments response to his going about in public with his new son, as if taking care of his kid is some sort of optional special credit he's earning. It's as though everything fathers do, economics aside, is bonus; nothing mothers do is enough. This is one of the reasons why a woman might want to be a man (and why choosing to have children can mean something entirely different for a woman than a man, unless she has that still-rare thing: a partner whose commitment to the work is truly equal). Were I a man, or had I a woman as partner, I might have made very different choices about marriage and children.

Photograph: John Lee/The Guardian

One often hears statements implying that it's generous of a man to put up with a woman's brilliance or success, though more and more straight couples are negotiating this as more women become principal breadwinners or higher earners (and Leonard Woolf was exemplary in his support for his wife's work, which outshone his own). But growing up, I knew that I was supposed to be the audience rather than a participant, or the centre of attention.

I've written before about men explaining things - about that dynamic in which some men assume they know when they don't, and that the woman they're talking to doesn't when she does. A 2008 essay I wrote on the topic never stopped circulating, apparently because it resonated for so many women and maybe some men. The word mansplaining now exists in more than 30 languages, according to an article this year, and I realise that built into the idea is a dynamic in which women are eternally the audience. There are no signs that mansplaining is going away. An acquaintance recently told me, "A man once asked me if I knew of the Bracero program [for Mexican farmworkers in the US], and when I said, 'Why yes, I wrote my undergrad thesis about it,' he replied, 'Well, I'll tell you about it.' I said, 'No, I'll tell you, fucker!' And then the dinner party got weird."

Like most women, even after the age when strangers demanded I give them a smile, I've had complete strangers come up to me to unload their theories or stories at considerable length, without reciprocity in the conversation, if conversation is the term for this one-way street. We know the reality of this from studies about how boys are called on more in school, and grow up to talk more in meetings, and interrupt women more than men.

How do you think big when you're supposed to not get in the way, not overshadow or intimidate?

In the 1990s the artist Ann Hamilton gave her students lightweight 4ft by 8ft sheets of plywood to carry around everywhere they went for a week. The exercise made them conscious of navigating space; they were awkward, forever at risk of bumping into people and things, probably offering up a lot of excuses. Success sometimes seems like that for women, an awkwardly large thing that is supposed to be in other people's way and for which you might need to apologise periodically. The phrases sometimes used for men who partner with successful women - taking it in his stride, not put out by, OK with, dealing with, cool with - are reminders that female success can be regarded as some kind of intrusion or inappropriate behaviour.

What would it feel like to have a success that does not in any way contain failure, that is not awkward or grounds for apology, something that you don't need to downplay, to have power that enhances rather than detracts from your attractiveness? (The very idea that powerlessness is attractive is appalling - and real.) Ann Hamilton has had a tremendous career, and some of it came from the sheer scale and ambition of her work from the outset, which seemed exceptional when she appeared on the art scene in the late 1980s. I remember all the women art students I met in that era, who made tiny, furtive things that expressed something about their condition, including the lack of room they felt free to occupy. How do you think big when you're supposed to not get in the way, not overstep your welcome, not overshadow or intimidate? Ann wrote to me when I asked about that plywood assignment long ago: "I am still trying to break the habit of apologising for myself - even though I have little hesitation in asking for help on projects - asking for myself brings out the old, 'Please excuse me.'"

Hillary Clinton during the presidential debate. She has talked about facing hostility at law school from men. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP

I know things are changing, and younger women have different experiences, but women older than me have horrifying stories to tell, and we are not out from under that shadow. Supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says of her arrival at law school in the 1950s, "The dean then asked each of us in turn to say what we were doing at the law school, occupying a seat that could be held by a man." Hillary Clinton told an interviewer a few years ago about meeting with similar opposition in the 1960s, from the young men who'd shown up to take the law school admissions test at Harvard when she did. One even accused her of being homicidal in her ambitions: "If you take my spot, I'll get drafted, and I'll go to Vietnam, and I'll die." He didn't imagine she had a right to compete; or that the place that neither had yet won was no more his than hers. It's not just trouble at the top: women plumbers, electricians and mechanics have told me about being treated as incompetent, intrusive or both in their field.

This year Silicon Valley has been haemorrhaging workers' stories of sexual harassment and discrimination

It isn't hard to find contemporary horror stories of women who can't wedge a word in edgewise at meetings, have their ideas taken up by others, don't get promoted as they might if they were men, who get harassed and groped or, in the white-collar world, not invited to the executive bonding sessions. This year Silicon Valley has been haemorrhaging workers' stories of sexual harassment and discrimination, and the gist of many is that the tech companies tolerate harassment more than they tolerate people who report it. Even this month a Google employee, in a now infamous screed, insisted that the deeply unequal landscape of Silicon Valley's white-collar jobs is due to nothing more or less than men's superior capacity.

We still have a long way to go. A young woman enrolled at a women's college told me this summer she was thrilled to be in an intellectual habitat where no shining young men were going to dominate the classroom conversations the way they had in her high school; walking home across campus at 3am without thinking about safety was another pleasure. (Women do engage in sexual assault, but in numbers that are minute compared to those of men.) Women are targets in the online world, too; in a little experiment on Twitter last year, the journalist Summer Brenner borrowed her brother's profile picture and turned her first name into initials - the harassment she had experienced online dropped to almost nothing. Women may aspire to be men just to be free from persecution by them.

If I were a man... I didn't want to be someone else so much as I wanted, from time to time, to be treated as someone else, or left alone as I would be if I was something else. In particular, I've wanted to be able to walk around alone, in cities, on mountains, unmolested. You can't wander lonely as a cloud when you're always checking to see whether you're being followed, or bracing yourself in case the person passing grabs you. I've been insulted, threatened, spat on, attacked, groped, harassed, followed; women I know have been stalked so ferociously they had to go into hiding, sometimes for years; other women I know have been kidnapped, raped, tortured, stabbed, beaten with rocks, left for dead. It impacts on your sense of freedom to say the least.

A small part of my consciousness is perpetually occupied by these survival questions whenever I'm outdoors alone, though there are a few places I've been - Iceland, Japan, extremely remote wildernesses where bears were the only menace - where I felt I didn't have to think about it. Solitary walking is where a lot of writers - Wordsworth, Rousseau, Thoreau, Gary Snyder - got a lot of their thinking and composing done; I have, too, but it got interrupted both from outside and from this internal monitor, always thinking about my safety. I know that my whiteness tips the balance the other way with this; it lets me go places that a black person can't, and the short answer to what my life might be like had I been born black would be: different in nearly every imaginable respect.

There are many stories of people cross-dressing not as self-expression, but for practical purposes, just as there are of people of colour passing as white. Deborah Samson and Anna Maria Lane are among the women who fought against the British in the revolutionary war dressed as men, and more women did the same in the Union Army during the civil war. The novelist George Sand used a man's name to traverse the literary world of 19th-century France and then men's clothes to traverse Paris. She wasn't just hiding out from harassment, but putting away the treacherous shoes and yards of fabric that made it hard to walk through a city that was rough-surfaced and filthy. She traded those fragile things in for solid boots and sturdy clothes in which she could roam confidently in all weathers and times of day and night, and loved it. Sylvia Plath, born a century later, wrote in her journal when she was 19 that, "Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night."

Supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked at law school what she was doing 'occupying a seat that could be held by a man'. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Not a little of the stuff women wore, and still wear, is an impediment and a confinement. Some women evacuating the World Trade Center on September 11 did so barefoot, lacerating their feet because their shoes impaired their mobility. What is it like to spend a lot of your life in shoes in which you're less steady and swift than the people around you? Some women wear tight clothes that hamper free movement, fragile clothes, clothes you can trip over. These garments can be fun and glamorous, but as an everyday uniform they're often incapacitating.

Trans people have been remarkable witnesses to how differently the world treats them when they transition. I have read many stories of a woman finding that she no longer has the right of way but will be bumped into on the street; a man finding that he is no longer interrupted. Gender shapes the spaces - social, conversational, professional, as well as literal - that we are given to occupy. Who we are, I realised as I co-created an atlas of New York City, is even built into the landscape, in which many things are named after men, few after women, from streets and buildings - Lafayette Street, Madison Avenue, Lincoln Center, Rockefeller Center - to boroughs - nearby Paterson, Levittown, Morristown. The nomenclature of the city seemed to encourage men to imagine greatness for themselves as generals, captains of industry, presidents, senators. My collaborators and I made a map in which all the subway stops in New York were renamed after the city's great women. Last year, when I discussed it with students at Columbia university (named after Christopher Columbus, of course), a young woman of colour remarked that she had slouched all her life; that in a city where things were named after people like her she might stand up straight. Another wondered whether she would be sexually harassed on boulevards named after women. The world is an uneven surface, with plenty to trip on and room to reinvent.

I like being a woman. I love watching and maybe smiling at or talking to kids I run into in parks and grocery stores and anywhere else; I'm confident no one will ever take me for a creep or a kidnapper, and I know that it would be more complicated if I were a man. There are more subtle advantages about the range of expression I'm allowed in my personal relations, including in my close, supportive, emotionally expressive friendships with other women - and, through all my adult life, my friendships with gay men, many of whom who have boldly, festively, brilliantly broken the rules of masculinity and helped me laugh at the gaps between who we are and who we're supposed to be. Liberation is a contagious project, and growing up around people who took apart and reassembled gender helped liberate even a straight woman like me.

So I don't wish I were a man. I just wish we were all free.

* The Mother Of All Questions is published by Granta on 7 September at £12.99. To order a copy for £9.74, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Rebecca Solnit will be speaking at Southbank Centre 's London Literature festival on 30 October.

* Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine's letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).

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hen I was very young, some gay friends of mine threw a cross-dressing party. My boyfriend at the time, with the help of his mother, did so well that a lot of straight men were unnerved; they needed to know that the lust-inspiring, simpering siren in the tight slip was not compromising their heterosexuality.

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Prose and verse in Shakespeare’s plays | The British Library

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Shakespeare’s plays contain both prose and verse. Kim Ballard discusses the playwright’s selective use of blank verse, and considers several cases where the choice of prose or verse helps us understand class, character psychology and mood.

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Video: Playing Charley in 'Death of a Salesman'

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The veteran stage actor Bill Camp talks about his performance in Arthur Miller's classic play.

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The story of Genesis and the creation of man

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The story of Genesis and the creation of man

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1 In the beginning, when God created the universe, 2 the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water. 3 Then God commanded, "Let there be light"-and light appeared. 4 God was pleased with what he saw. Then he separated the light from the darkness, 5 and he named the light "Day" and the darkness "Night." Evening passed and morning came-that was the first day.

6-7 Then God commanded, "Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places"-and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it. 8 He named the dome "Sky." Evening passed and morning came-that was the second day.

9 Then God commanded, "Let the water below the sky come together in one place, so that the land will appear"-and it was done. 10 He named the land "Earth," and the water which had come together he named "Sea." And God was pleased with what he saw. 11 Then he commanded, "Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit"-and it was done. 12 So the earth produced all kinds of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw. 13 Evening passed and morning came-that was the third day.

14 Then God commanded, "Let lights appear in the sky to separate day from night and to show the time when days, years, and religious festivals begin; 15 they will shine in the sky to give light to the earth"-and it was done. 16 So God made the two larger lights, the sun to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night; he also made the stars. 17 He placed the lights in the sky to shine on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God was pleased with what he saw. 19 Evening passed and morning came-that was the fourth day.

20 Then God commanded, "Let the water be filled with many kinds of living beings, and let the air be filled with birds." 21 So God created the great sea monsters, all kinds of creatures that live in the water, and all kinds of birds. And God was pleased with what he saw. 22 He blessed them all and told the creatures that live in the water to reproduce and to fill the sea, and he told the birds to increase in number. 23 Evening passed and morning came-that was the fifth day.

24 Then God commanded, "Let the earth produce all kinds of animal life: domestic and wild, large and small"-and it was done. 25 So God made them all, and he was pleased with what he saw.

26 Then God said, "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small." 27 So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, 28 blessed them, and said, "Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals. 29 I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; 30 but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food"-and it was done. 31 God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came-that was the sixth day.

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Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 1 - Good News Translation

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The Story of Creation - In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, "Let there be light"-and light appeared.

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The Pros and Cons of First Person Narration

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The Pros and Cons of First Person Narration

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Relevant to Harvest

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According to great authors, such as Stephen King, first person narration is usually the first method of writing for new authors and is still even used by many established authors. As you can see, this style comes with certain strengths, such as simplicity, accessibility and directness. However, it also comes with its own set of drawbacks that should be taken into consideration. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of first person narration:

List of Advantages of First Person Narration

1. It is accessible.
It has been claimed by many authors that this style of writing is accessible as they can use their voice for narration, which means that they will have an immediate connection to their creations. As for the narrators, they will have a better understanding of the characters who might otherwise they have to imagine, giving them a strong starting point for the story. Generally, accessibility comes automatically with this style.

2. It will put readers inside the narrator's mind.
Immediately, narration places readers inside the narrator's head, allowing for an intimate portrayal of emotions and other thoughts-the narrator will be able to communicate effectively how every moment feels and deliver sight, smell, sound, touch and taste all through his prism. His love, hopes, fears and despair will be brought to the readers directly with maximum impact. He can also put across the motivations of the main character, and his reactions to situations will be effectively imparted, creating a strong sense of empathy in the readers.

3. It is direct.
The directness in first person narration will make the author's work so easy that he would often repeat it. For example, "Interview with the Vampire" has used character Louis as first person narrator, which made the novel ran itself off speedily that the author duplicated such a feat with "The Vampire Lestat", which sees the vampire Lestat as the first-person protagonist this time.

4. It provides clear identity to the text.
By writing in first person, an author will be able to deliver an entire story in his narrator's voice, which can give a clear identity to the text and submerge readers further into a world he is creating. He can also hide expositions within a stream of consciousness and turn them into musings and thoughts.

5. It makes it easier for the narrator to say whatever he wants.
One great advantage of first person narration is that a narrator can say whatever he wants, which is impossible with third-person narration, and he can be completely excused for this because it can be part of his character. Also, the narrator would not even have to be the writer's protagonist, though he would be the protagonist in his story. Taking for example a narration of the life of Christ-Jesus would be the protagonist and Satan the antagonist, while Judas would be the lead character and narrator in his own story arc.

List of Disadvantages of First Person Narration

1. It is limited to a single story thread.
While King agrees that first person narration is used by many new and established writers, he prefers third-person narration as this allows him to work on a large canvas, which is limited in first person narration. It would be difficult for an author who uses first person to move through a number of sub-plots and various narrative threads. Its disadvantage of being limited to a single story thread will also make descriptions of the characters and the narrator problematic if the story is stuck with only a single pair of eyes.

2. It would risk making the narrative self-indulgent in the narrator's emotions.
This style of writing would risk narrative becoming self-indulgent in the emotions of the narrator, as it will see constant self-referencing and extreme emotional responses, which can drown out the story making it become too much. Unlike in passive narration, the narrator would be in the scene, but would not be doing too much, just watching the other characters with no feelings or reactions.

3. It tends to be bias.
Since this type of writing is told from the perspective of only a single narrator, the story would naturally become biased by the filter of the character who tells the story, creating the literary problem that is known as "unreliable narrator", which entails that the storyteller is either purposefully distorting the truth or having their own understanding of the characters and events.

4. It narrows the experience.
First person narration would limit reader experience, as the readers would only experience the narrator's side of the story. It also restricts the writer, as he can only reveal what the narrator would see and think, considering that this character should always be on stage or observing it. As previously implied, this style would make it difficult to add a subplot to a story, as readers cannot entirely see into the minds of other characters. Moreover, the sub-plots would need to involve the narrator or switch narrators to another first-person perspective, which is not truly feasible.

5. It would be difficult to describe the narrator.
Describing a narrator would be almost impossible within a first person narration, unless there would be a scene where he needs to describe the way how they look, which is not advised in writing, as it is referred to as a terrible cliché and even completely unnecessary. Considering that the narrator tends to have less understanding of the story's big picture, the writer needs to be careful of not giving him too much awareness or knowledge, while sufficiently hinting that readers will be able to surmise the overall plot at a certain point in time, which is difficult to pull off.

6. It would make it difficult for the narrator to capture the character.
To be successful, this style of writing should embody the way the narrator speaks, and some dialects would make the piece difficult to read. This means that the writer should ensure the narrator capture the character and carefully plan how he talks to the reader, which can be difficult.

So, there you have it! Based on the advantages and disadvantages listed above, would you go for first person narration when writing a story, or not?

Author Bio
Natalie Regoli is a child of God, devoted wife, and mother of two boys. She has a Masters Degree in Law from The University of Texas. Natalie has been published in several national journals and has been practicing law for 18 years. If you would like to reach out to contact Natalie, then go here to send her a message.

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11 Advantages and Disadvantages of First Person Narration

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According to great authors, such as Stephen King, first person narration is usually the first method of writing for new authors and is still even used by many established authors. As you can see, this style comes with certain strengths, such as simplicity, accessibility and directness.

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A move to replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry with Sir Winston Churchill on the £5 banknote, leaving the Queen as the only female face on our currency, was met with widespread protest. An online petition was signed by 35,000 people and pressure was increased with the threat of legal action when the campaign raised more than £13,000 in donations. At the end of July the Bank of England announced that Jane Austen would appear on the new £10 note.

To help you explore feminist debate and gender issues, we have collated stories from the Guardian, infographics on inequality and lesson ideas from the web. You'll find a photo campaign on why feminism belongs in schools, a street art project against harassment and a performer who's created a heroine to fight female stereotypes.

From the Guardian

The global gender gap
Education and healthcare are improving for women across the world, but men continue to do better when it comes to jobs and wages, according to data from the World Economic Forum. The piece discusses the reasons why and includes infographics that allow you to explore the report further.

What happened when I started a feminist society at school
When Jinan Younis set up a feminist society at school she was met with a tirade of abuse. In this blog post the 17-year-old explains why she is a feminist and her concerns on how boys view the opposite sex.

Street art against harassment
Brooklyn artist Tatyana Fazlaizadeh talks in the video about why she is fed up of being harassed on the street and how she hopes her public art campaign will help.

Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model
In this interview Bryony Kimming explains why she created a charter to challenge gender stereotypes with her 10-year-old niece. The performer talks about the theatre show, which is currently on at the Edinburgh fringe, as well as the commodification of childhood and the pop industry's objectification of women and girls.

Inequality in pay
See the gap between male and female pay for different jobs. A graphic sets out the inequalities clearly and there's a table showing the full data from the Office for National Statistics.

Which jobs do women and men do?
An infographic shows the disparities between the number of men and women doing different types of work. Only a brief selection of jobs are shown, but it gives you access to the full set of data.

On the Guardian Teacher Network

Introduction to Jane Austen and her writing
The writer will soon be appearing on our £10 banknotes. The lesson looks at her background and how the structures of pre 20th century society influenced her writing. The literary techniques she uses in Emma are also analysed.

The big picture on sex and gender
From genes to gender stereotyping, this comprehensive guide from the Wellcome Trust explores the science behind the sexes and how this plays out in our society. It delves into the nature vs nurture debate, looking at whether peoples perceptions of gender are determined by biology or cultural expectations.

Caryl Churchill: How the playwright challenged female stereotypes
In the 1980s Caryl Churchill's play Top Girls encouraged people to rethink their traditional ideas about women. This lesson looks at how the playwright challenged social issues and asks students to consider its message in the context of today.

The impact of contraception
A film in which two women in Bangladesh talk about how access to contraception has affected their lives is included in this resource. Students are then encouraged to think about the importance of contraception for the health and well-being of women and their families through a range of activities.

Stereotypes and page 3
A brief look at how society perceives boys and girls while they're growing up and how this can affect their brain. The information sheet looks at arguments against Page 3 and has references allowing students to explore the debates further.

Best of the web

Who needs feminism?
Women at Duke University have to challenge popular misconceptions about feminism. As part of the movement, people from around the world have taken photos of a message explaining why feminism is important to them. You can see images of what they say on the site. There is a similar campaign on why feminism belongs in schools.

Raising gender issues in specific subjects
Ideas and resources to help you explore gender issues while teaching subjects across the curriculum from the Gender and Education Association.

A global look at gender equality
Lesson plans, videos and stories looking at the importance of gender equality are provided by Unicef.

Suffragette movement
Delve into the national archives and learn about how women won the vote. The lesson idea comes with a worksheet that gets students to answer questions using the primary sources provided.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Looking for your next role? Take a look at Guardian jobs for schools for thousands of the latest teaching, leadership and support jobs.
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Lessons on feminism - news and teaching resources round up

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A move to replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry with Sir Winston Churchill on the £5 banknote, leaving the Queen as the only female face on our currency, was met with widespread protest. An online petition was signed by 35,000 people and pressure was increased with the threat of legal action when the campaign raised more than £13,000 in donations.

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t turns out that the story about Victorians wrapping little trousers around their indecent piano legs is apocryphal or, at the very least, a weak joke. Yet the idea endures that our great-grandparents muffled their bodies in heavy fabric and silence. It's an idea we picked up from the early 20th century and then, because it was flattering to imagine ourselves as so different from our poor buttoned-up, self-loathing ancestors, we refused to let it go.

Yet you only have to take a quick imaginative tour of the physical conditions in which the Victorians lived to realise that a state of chilly physical self-sufficiency would have been beyond them. From the end of the 18th century, British citizens piled into the expanding cities from the countryside. Strangers who had never previously set eyes on one another found themselves in an involuntary embrace at the factory bench, the railway station, the lodging house, the park or on the top deck of an omnibus. Other people's sneezes, bums, elbows, smells, snores, farts and breathy whistles were, quite literally, in your face. Privacy, in the form of screens, locks, water closets, first-class carriages and single beds, was available only to a privileged few. For everyone else it was a question of raising thresholds of embarrassment and shame to protect against sensory overload.

To the brute proximity of other people's bodies you would have to add the tyranny of living in your own. In an age without antibiotics or much effective doctoring, discomforts that we moderns can magic away in less than a week - constipation, an aching tooth or swollen toe - became chronic conditions to be endured over decades. In the process a body might become permanently marked with the tokens of its earthly passage - an osteoporotic hump, a dense splatter of smallpox scars, a missing finger - that it carried with it to the grave.

So if the Victorians have a reputation for denying or concealing their bodies, it is only because they were obliged to live with them so intensely. And that reticence slipped naturally into the way that they wrote, or rather didn't, about their physical selves. Most biographers in the 19th century behaved as if their subjects had taken leave of the body, or had never possessed such a thing in the first place. If flesh and blood registered in Victorian life-writing at all, it was in the broadest, airiest generalities - a manly stride here, the sweetest smile there. Mostly, though, there was a hole in the biographical text where arms, legs, breasts and bellies should have been.

It's an absence that has carried over into our own modes of writing about the mid-distance past. That's why even the most attentive reader may finish a biography of a Victorian subject feeling that they'd be hard-pressed to pick them out in an identity parade. (Biographies typically contain visual likenesses, to be sure, but those quarter page black-and-white images don't show the body in motion, and can't give you much idea of its habitual off-duty slouch, let alone its sound or smell.) So while a life of Charlotte Brontë might supply chapter and verse on the novelist's rich interior life, it won't prepare you for the fact that when she opens her mouth an Irish accent comes out (you were expecting genteel Yorkshire). Likewise, having devoured a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, you may feel that you have experienced all the exhilaration of her elopement to Italy, not to mention the intricacies of the lyric form. Yet what a shock on encountering her in person to realise that she is partly African, with a dark complexion and full mouth. What you're seeing is the physical trace of her West Indian heritage, a heritage that included a moment two generations previously when a plantation owner glanced at one of his female slaves and felt a tickle of entitlement.

I want physical detail in biography: how did it feel to catch sight of them across a room or sit next to them at dinner?

The next stop is the Lake District, where you find yourself discreetly circling William Wordsworth, trying to work out why the shape of his body looks so different from the front than from the back. Is it some trick of the light? Finally, you bump into William Gladstone, the esteemed Liberal prime minister, and are taken aback to notice that his left forefinger is missing. He lost it in a shooting accident as a young man, but good manners mean his contemporaries never mentioned it, portraitists ignored it, and even the caricaturists tactfully covered it up. You, however, can't stop staring at that flaccid black finger-stall where the missing digit used to be.

"You", of course, means "me". For I am the reader who feels chronically shortchanged by the lack of physical detail in biography. What, I long to know, were people in the 19th century actually "like" - a word that has a long and distinguished heritage in the English language, one that tells of deep presence and profound affinity. Tell me about these people's books and their battles, their big love affairs and their little meannesses by all means - but how did it feel to catch sight of them across a crowded room, or to find yourself sitting next to them at dinner? Did they lean in close and whisper, or stand at a distance and shout? Did they smell (probably, most people did) - but of what exactly? Were they natty or slobbish, a lip-licker or a nose-picker?

In order to answer these questions I set out to track the bodies of a clutch of famous Victorians, in the hope that following a thickened index finger or deep baritone voice into the realms of social history, medical discourse and aesthetic practice would get me closer than before to the physical experiences of 150 years ago. Along the way I hoped to introduce a certain lumpiness to canonical life narratives that have previously been rendered as smooth, symmetrical and as strangely unconvincing as a death mask. For it is, surely, in lop-sidedness and open-endedness, in bulges, dips, hollows, oozes and itches that we come closest to a sense of what it feels like to live in the solitude of a single body, both then and now.

In April 1866 Charles Darwin, author of the epoch-making On the Origin of Species, made a rare appearance at a Royal Society soirée in Burlington House, Piccadilly. It quickly became apparent that few among the distinguished company recognised the tall, stooped man in the brushed-down evening dress. The scientific superstar was left having to sidle up to old friends and introduce himself, an ordeal for such a shy man, and a mortification for those who realised too late that they had spent the evening snubbing the most distinguished person in the room.

The last time anyone had seen Darwin in public had been four years earlier when he had been clean-shaven, give or take some gingery muttonchop whiskers. Now here he was quite transformed, sporting a forest of grey facial hair that made him appear at least a decade older than his 57 years. It also made him look like someone else entirely. "The beard alters him so," explained his wife, Emma, writing to her aunt Fanny Allen the next day, tickled at the unintended consequences of the accidental disguise.

Natural selection ... Charles Darwin's wife, Emma, suggested he grow a beard. Photograph: Julia Margaret Cameron/Royal Photographic Society

It had been Emma who first suggested Charles grow a beard, as a way of dealing with his severe eczema. Since adolescence he had been subject to breakouts of a skin complaint that swelled his lips and turned his pleasantly pudgy features red, so that he periodically appeared like an angry cherub. Ceasing to shave would eliminate the irritation that came with the daily scraping of skin with steel, and allow Darwin to conceal the scaly redness that had been the source of much embarrassment since his teens. Indeed, disappearing behind a thick curtain of facial hair was a relief for a man who had long been convinced that he was, to use his own sad self-accusation, "hideous".

Darwin was not alone in using the new fashion for facial hair to bind up private psychic wounds. For the past 15 years, men of every class had been growing out their early-Victorian mutton chops and " piccadilly weepers " into spectacularly bushy beards. Alfred Tennyson had started his poetic career as a clean-shaven young man with a jaw that could only be described as "lantern". But by the age of 45 his facial architecture had begun to collapse, thanks to a "queer" set of false teeth. Growing an extravagant moustache and beard not only allowed the poet laureate to hide his caved-in mouth, but also enabled him to fashion himself as a timeless sage, one who channelled the wisdom of the ages.

Dickens, meanwhile, was so self-conscious about his weak chin, especially now that he was besieged by requests to sit for photographic portraits, that he grew his trademark door knocker as a kind of prosthesis (a full beard was beyond him). The American poet Longfellow wanted to disguise the terrible scars he had acquired while trying to rescue his wife from a house fire. The nonsense writer Edward Lear was, like Darwin, convinced he was ugly and simply wanted to hide, declaring: "There was an Old Man with a beard, / Who said, 'It is just as I feared! / Two Owls and a Hen, /Four Larks and a Wren, / Have all built their nests in my beard!' "

Despite being surrounded by this extravagant facial topiary, Darwin knew that a man's capacity to grow facial hair must be about more than vanity, neurosis or fashion. In his Descent of Man, he wrestles with the problem of what the beard is for. Is it there to attract a female mate, much like the peacock's bright tail feathers or a lion's handsome mane? Or is it something to do with male competition - the man with the hairiest jaw gets to dominate his smoother friends? But, in that case, why was it that in Tierra del Fuego, which Darwin had visited as a young naturalist aboard the Beagle, indigenous men, who might be assumed to be "closer to Nature", had such light beard growth? And why did the Fuegians appear to regard the bristly chins of the Beagle crew with all the horror of home counties aunts? Did the answer lie in the realms of culture, biology or both?

Darwin never came to a clear conclusion, and it's a puzzlement that modern scientists share to this day. What is apparent, though, is that Victorian women tended not to share their men's enthusiasm for a bristly chin. Emily Tennyson longed for her "Ally" to shave off his malodorous attachment (personal hygiene was never the poet laureate's strong point) while Mary Butler, with whom Darwin struck up a friendship, declared "I don't like the idea of your long beard" and never wrote to him again. But the most emphatic shudder came from Lady Morley, who said of the very hairy Duke of Newcastle that she could always tell how many courses he'd had for dinner by looking at his beard. It comes as no surprise to learn that Lady Morley's husband remained eccentrically clean-shaven.

One day in the 1840s a young woman in her mid-20s was talking to her neighbour in a genteel villa on the outskirts of Coventry. At some point in the conversation Mary Ann Evans stretched out her right hand "with some pride" to demonstrate how much bigger it was than her left. It was the legacy, she explained, of having spent her teenage years making butter and cheese on her family's farm, eight miles outside the city. All that vigorous turning of the churn at 40 repetitions a minute, not to mention the squeezing of the curds to expel the watery whey, had built up the muscles in her right hand. Even now, several years on, her right hand was broader than her left, making her permanently lop-sided.

A portrait of George Eliot, after F d'A Durade, neatly avoids exposing the author's right hand. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Un/REX

The story might have slipped into obscurity, were it not for the fact that, 15 years or so after that Coventry conversation, Evans entered public consciousness with a flourish as "George Eliot". In Adam Bede, her first full-length novel, Eliot tells the story of Hetty Sorrel, a pretty dairymaid who frets at the way that her hands have been coarsened by "butter-making, and other work that ladies never did". Dismayed at the way that her body blabs its social origins, Hetty relishes the camouflaging tokens that she believes will erase the humiliating marks of her lowly status - fancy earrings, a pretty neckerchief. It is this desire for a different kind of body that, ironically, leads Hetty to that folkloric fate - seduction by the young squire, resulting in pregnancy. Adam Bede caused a sensation when it was published in 1859 and set Eliot on the triumphant early part of her career, producing a clutch of novels rooted closely in her experience of growing up in the rural Midlands.

When Eliot died unexpectedly in 1880 you might have expected the guardians of her posthumous reputation - widower, brother, nephew - to be delighted for the public to hear this charming story about how the great novelist's body carried a permanent memento of her early years in rural Warwickshire. Not a bit of it. When the first, unauthorised, biography came out just 28 months after Eliot's death, these professional men - a banker, a clergyman and a gentleman farmer - were appalled to discover the Coventry neighbour had passed on the anecdote about Mary Ann Evans' broad right hand. Now it was out there, in print, for anyone to read.

There was nothing for it but to embark on an energetic campaign of disinformation. Over the next 50 years George Eliot's increasingly genteel descendants periodically issued stern denials about the great novelist's labours in the dairy. There was, they maintained, nothing remotely odd about her right hand: it had done nothing more taxing than practising the piano and taking tea. Any would-be biographer who wanted access to precious Evans family documents was required to include in their text a strongly worded rebuttal of the ridiculous story about how the great novelist George Eliot, author of the incomparable Middlemarch, had spent her youth doing sweaty, stinking, back-breaking manual labour. As for her right hand, Eliot's heirs insisted, they happened to know for a fact that it was the very spit of her left.

In the early days of 1860, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unveiled his latest painting to a select group of friends and supporters. It depicts the head and torso of a luscious young woman in a brocade costume that falls open to reveal her thick pillar of a neck and deep, creamy chest. A tumble of red-gold hair adds to the pervasive sense of undoneness. And then there is her mouth. "Mulatto mouths", carped the critics, would become a signature of Rossetti's work over the decades to come. This, though, is the first one that really matters: thick, quilted, and so ripe that on this occasion it is unable to hold itself decently shut. As if to underscore the point that it is the woman's lips that are the real subject of his painting, Rossetti titled it Bocca Baciata, which translates as "The Kissed Mouth".

Fanny Cornforth's mouth marks a moment of radical departure in Rossetti's art. Indeed, anyone peering over the 31-year-old's shoulder as he put the finishing touches to Bocca Baciata in the autumn of 1859 would have found it hard to believe that the painting came from the same brush that had produced The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini! a mere decade earlier. Those juvenile works had been sharp of outline, bright of colour and pure of thought - the succinct expression, in other words, of the pre-Raphaelite manifesto that Rossetti and the rest of the Brotherhood had tacked together in 1848 with the intention of injecting English painting with the artistic and moral astringencies of the Italian quattrocento. Frequently using his mistress Lizzie Siddal and sister Christina as his models, Rossetti's early female figures are angular and spare. Above all, they keep their thin lips firmly clamped together.

This latest painting, though, was something quite different. While its title is taken from a story by Boccaccio, Rossetti's Bocca Baciata is strikingly devoid of narrative intent, uninterested in either illustrating a literary scene or teaching a moral lesson. If the painting can be said to have a subject at all it is pleasure - not just the pleasure of beholding Cornforth's luscious features, but of the material quality of the paint, here laid on in loose oily swipes so different from Rossetti's earlier dense stippling. This, critics have suggested, is the moment when British painting turned away from its obligation to represent the exterior world and became concerned with the practice of its own making. Or, to put it another way, what we are looking at is the first sighting of artistic modernism.

Cornforth was not simply Rossetti's favourite model of the early 1860s. She was also his on-off domestic partner for a quarter of a century. Her mouth - not so much its shape but what she did with it - marks her distance and difference from the other two, far more celebrated, mistress/models in Rossetti's life. These were Siddal (to whom Rossetti was briefly married) and Jane Morris (the wife of his friend and business partner William Morris). Like Siddal and Morris, Cornforth came from a working-class background. Unlike them, though, she never bothered to change the way she spoke in order to fit with the pre-Raphaelites' middle class mores (the young men may have been bohemians but that didn't stop them being snobs). So while Siddal and Morris worked hard to eradicate their original dialects (London and Oxford respectively) and struck observers as remarkably uncommunicative, garrulous Cornforth chattered 19 to the dozen in her rural mid-Sussex burr. "I know I don't say it right," she shrugged when Rossetti's friends sniggered at her tendency to mangle aspirates, past participles and even plurals.

Then there was the question of food, or rather appetite. Siddal and Morris kept themselves rigorously thin, to the point where they might today be described as anorexic. Disciplining your flesh was necessary to have a hope of fitting into the "aesthetic" dress that the PRB preferred their women to wear - loose, floating gowns with minimal underpinnings that looked as though they belonged in a medieval fresco. Cornforth, by contrast, loved food, preferred the cheerful vulgarity of contemporary fashion and relied on a corset and cage crinoline to squeeze herself into the required shape. A rare photograph taken when she was not yet 30 shows her with her chest puffed out, waist bitten in, and a huge sticking-out skirt that resembles a galleon in full sail. By this time Rossetti was regularly referring to her in her hearing as "the Lumpses". She was also his "Elephant" - a play on both her name (EleFANt) and her bulky shape.

While Rossetti's friends registered Cornforth's "sumptuous" beauty, that didn't mean they were willing to acknowledge this vulgar woman with her unruly mouth as a significant part of the artist's life. The moment he died in 1882, at the age of 53, Cornforth was cast out of what remained of the pre-Raphaelite circle and all but excised from its biographical records. She ended her days in the county asylum in her native Sussex, where the medical casebook records that, now an old lady, she is "incoherent & talks incessantly", but also loves her food. And as for the mouth that was once described as "so awfully lovely" yet perversely indecent too, the asylum authorities say that it is now devoid of teeth apart from a few decaying stumps over which upper and lower dentures are insecurely hooked. What's more, the authorities note in a final terse observation before rearing back in disgust, Cornforth's tongue is furred and her breath foul. Sad perhaps, but irrelevant surely not. For it is here, in the smells, blots and gurgles of the body's physical life that some of the most revealing biographical stories about the Victorians turn out to reside.

Victorians Undone is published by Fourth Estate (£20). To order a copy for £17 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

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Embarrassing bodies: what did the Victorians have to hide?

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t turns out that the story about Victorians wrapping little trousers around their indecent piano legs is apocryphal or, at the very least, a weak joke. Yet the idea endures that our great-grandparents muffled their bodies in heavy fabric and silence.

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Useful for context

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He is one of the most maligned monarchs in British history, portrayed as dull and overly frugal in his lifetime, labelled the "royal brute" by Thomas Paine and remembered by subsequent generations as the mad king who lost America.

But a major project led by the Royal Archives will, it is hoped, lead to a radical reappraisal of George III, one that pitches him as a complex, humane and deeply engaged polymath.

The archives have announced details of the Georgian Papers Programme, in which more than 350,000 usually unseen documents are being made available online over the next four years.

On Saturday, the online portal opens for business, allowing anyone, whether an academic or someone with only a vague interest, to go through documents including intimate letters between the king and his wife, Charlotte, household bills, essays, notes about the war in America and menus for grand occasions.

Detail from portrait of George III by Johan Joseph Zoffany. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017.

Oliver Urquhart Irvine, the librarian and assistant keeper of the Queen's Archives, called it "a major milestone" that heralded a revolution in access to documents stored away from public view in the Round Tower of Windsor Castle.

"The opportunity to make available for the first time a vast, largely unseen, private archive of this scope and quality is rare at any time and, today, probably unequalled."

Irvine said there was nothing like viewing source material. "Seeing original documents is utterly compelling," he said. "You can feel the passion, personality, worries and triumphs of individuals who have shaped major events. It can change your perspective on history."

The project's launch coincides with a BBC2 documentary to be broadcast on Monday that follows the early stages of the programme and explores some of the key questions around George's rule.

One of the most fascinating is his mental illness, which would manifest itself in breakdowns where he was confined to Windsor Castle or Kew, sometimes in a straitjacket.

Modern opinion is that it was a form of bipolar disorder. The symptoms - talking ridiculously fast, being excitable and irritable and sexually inappropriate - would be called hypomania today, Sir Simon Wessely, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, tells the programme.

The documentary follows researchers opening boxes of papers that have never been properly explored. It includes a draft letter of abdication written by George III during the American war of independence, but never deployed. It was full of crossing out and redrafting, blotches and scrawls.

George's observations on the transit of Venus. Photograph: PAPicselect

Another sheds light on the network of private agents and spies used by the king. One, codenamed Aristarchus, writes that the king had been seen walking in disguise in the Queen's Garden at a time when the French were planning to assassinate him.

George's intelligence and love of science is reflected in detailed drawings and calculations he made for the transit of Venus on 23 June 1769, an event he witnessed from his specially commissioned observatory in Richmond Park.

He writes, accurately, that such an event will happen again in 1874 and 2004.

George III took his job very seriously, well tutored by his father, Frederick, who would have been king had he not died, aged 44, in 1751.

One document is a manual of kingship written by Frederick for 10-year-old George in which he writes: "Convince this nation that you are not only an Englishman born and bred, but that you are also this by inclination."

That was important and George was the first Hanoverian British king not to have German as his first language. It was during George's long reign, between 1760-1820, that the union flag was adopted and the term United Kingdom first used.

Frederick also warned his son to "employ all your hands, all your power, to live with economy", something he did all his life, preferring a frugal existence on his country estates to the expense and pomp of court life.

There were many huge events during George's reign. He was the last British king of America and the first of Australia and he took a keen interest in the exploration of the time including the voyages of Captain Cook to the south seas.

One paper reveals secret instructions to Cook that he should treat any locals he finds with respect and "endeavour by all proper means to cultivate a friendship with them, making them presents of such trinkets as you may have onboard ... showing them every kindness, civility and regard".

The Georgian papers going online also reveal lots about those around him including his wife and their 15 children, the most famous of which was his eldest son who became Prince Regent, and later George IV.

The Prince Regent has gone down in history as a dissolute, extravagant and promiscuous philanderer, one held in some contempt by his father.

He was going off the rails as young as 19 and one letter from George III to the prime minister, Lord North, reports that the young prince had got into "a very improper connection with an actress, a woman of indifferent character" who was blackmailing his son. He proposed buying her off for £5,000, about £750,000 in today's money, which North agreed to.

Researchers have been going through the papers to decide what to place online first. One of the more poignant discoveries is a note from Charlotte to her children's nanny Lady Charlotte Finch. It thanks her for her care of Prince Alfred, Charlotte's 14th child who died aged one year and 10 months, and has sewn into it a lock of blond hair taken from Alfred before he died.

Many of the documents will have been studied already by historians visiting archives that were established in 1914. But Prof Arthur Burns, academic director for the Georgian Papers Programme at King's College London, said they could be looked at through different lenses.

Many academics in the 20th century were looking for the history of "the dead white males" when they researched the Georgian era. Historians today had many different approaches and specialisms and were were good at keeping open lines of communication. "This is the perfect sandpit for us all to meet on and explore those interconnections. Getting people together and having the conversation is going to be a great deal of the fun and intellectual challenge of this," he said.

George III - The Genius of the Mad King is on BBC2 on Monday at 9pm.

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Second thoughts on George III: online project could alter view of king

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He is one of the most maligned monarchs in British history, portrayed as dull and overly frugal in his lifetime, labelled the "royal brute" by Thomas Paine and remembered by subsequent generations as the mad king who lost America.

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Chapter summaries

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Themes and group presentation tasks

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William Blake's childhood vision of angels.

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Levi Roots returns to Peckham in South London to find out more about his favourite poet, William Blake, and the story of the vision of angels he had as a young boy.

"Sauntering along the boy looks up and sees a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough, like stars"

When Levi Roots was 15, a teacher read out William Blake's The Tyger to the class. For Levi, it was a life-changing moment. The singer and entrepreneur had only just learned to read and describes the poem as exploding into his brain the way no words ever had before.

Levi returns to South East London to find out more about his favourite poet and uncover the story of Blake's supposed first vision of angels bespangling the branches of a tree on Peckham Rye at the age of "8 or 10".

Writers, poets and artists continue to draw inspiration from this idea and we hear from some of them about why Blake, and especially this story, continues to have such powerful resonance.

David Almond, explains how Blake crept into his novel Skellig and why he thinks that childhood imagination is different from that of adults. Chris McCabe has been researching the poetic vibrations of the area across the centuries for a book about the lost poets of Nunhead Cemetery, Cenotaph South, and accompanies Levi on a quest to find Blake's tree. The filmmaker Sarah Turner recreated the angel incident for her film Public House, about the successful community takeover of a local pub. Levi, his guests, and students from Harris Girls Academy, a school that sits on the Rye take some time to look into the trees and see if they can find any traces of Blake's angels. What could those angels be and why does Blake, despite his difficulty, seem to ignite the passions of young people?

The programme includes readings by Peter Marinker, Chris McCabe, Levi Roots, Georgia Peskett, Barnaby Steed, David Almond and the students of Harris Girls Academy East Dulwich.

The choral piece, Criers of Peckham Rye, was for the film Public House by Duncan Macleod and performed by Dulwich Folk Choir and Duncan Macleod. The programme features other extracts from the film Public House made and sound designed by Sarah Turner.

Producer: Natalie Steed
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

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Levi Roots returns to Peckham in South London to find out more about his favourite poet, William Blake, and the story of the vision of angels he had as a young boy.

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Slavery in the late 18th century

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Black and British: A Forgotten History - 2. Freedom

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David Olusoga looks at slavery and remembers black sailors who fought for Britain.

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Slavery in the late 18th Century

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In this interview, Jim Crace talks in some detail about Harvest.

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About the Author

Jim Crace has written eleven novels. They have been twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and have won two Whitbread Awards. Among his other honours are the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize and the E.M.Forster Award. His.... Read more

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About the Author Jim Crace has written eleven novels. They have been twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and have won two Whitbread Awards. Among his other honours are the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize and the E.M.Forster Award. His.... Read more

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Jim Crace talks about his novel Harvest

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The classroom presentation

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Classroom presentation with notes

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'The invisible worm'

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Blake once said, "Without contraries there is no progression", and it's clear that his poetry collections Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience were part of a single scheme, like a painting with light and shade. When he published both together, he subtitled the volume "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul".

Like Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience also begins with a poem entitled "Introduction", and the contrast with Innocence is immediate - gone is the piper; here Blake's voice is the bard, authoritative, foreboding, severe:

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past & Future sees,
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk'd among the ancient trees,

This is Blake conjuring the spirit of the ancient bard and invoking the "slumbrous masses". The bard addresses the fallen and sinful Earth, pleading with it to return to Grace - "The starry shore".

Blake was writing at a time of great political turbulence. The war of independence in America and the revolution in France had created high hopes that tyranny was about to be overthrown - at least if you were a republican, like Blake - but they also created fear and uncertainty. These feelings are echoed in this introductory poem, which has a mood of darkness and premonition.

The title, Songs of Experience, warns us to expect more challenging material than in Songs of Innocence. But Blake uses the same lyrical format, each poem has short lines, and simple rhythms and rhymes, like a plain old rustic ballad.

The starry floor,
The wat'ry shore,
Is giv'n thee till the break of day.

The ballad has a light, uplifting metre but the content is sinister; the meaning subverting the form and making the poems all the more unsettling.

Blake met his beloved wife, Catherine Boucher, when he went to stay with relatives of his father's in Battersea. He was recovering from a difficult love affair with a girl who allowed him to "keep company" with her but refused to marry him. When he complained about her seeing other men, she turned to him and said "Are you a fool?", and later in life Blake would say, "That cured me of jealousy". Full of heartache, he recounted stories of this painful love to Catherine, walking in the fields around Battersea, and when she expressed her sympathy, he asked her: "Do you pity me?"

"Yes, indeed I do."

"Then I love you," he said.

Catherine was illiterate when she met Blake, but with his help she learned to read and she became an accomplished engraver. It can't have been easy living with a man who saw angels in trees and spent his entire life writing poems that hardly anyone bought. One of her few recorded comments is: "I have very little of Mr Blake's company. He is always in paradise." I should think Blake would have approved of that remark. Paradise is where he felt he belonged - in a place where there is no birth or death, just eternity.

To me the most perfect poem in the collection, and one of the greatest English lyrics, is "The Sick Rose", which opens with the extraordinary and arresting image of a rose affected by disease.

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

This little poem is really a version of Paradise Lost in eight very short lines. But there are points of contact with Blake's other mythological ideas, too. The "bed of crimson joy" stands for Blake's ideal of happiness, an England before the monarchies imposed order and repression. The "bed of crimson joy" may also be the Garden of Eden, as in Milton's poem, which itself stands for the English Commonwealth.

The "invisible worm" has all kinds of resonances with Satan and the evil angels in the second book of Paradise Lost, and the war in heaven that led to the fall of man. For Milton, the fall represents the collapse of the English Commonwealth and the restoration of the monarchy; for Blake, the "howling storm" is the storm of existence - Blake's experience in the turmoil in England, the struggle for freedom, and the reaction against the revolutionary wars in America. All these themes are linked in this poem: contemporary politics, England's great epic poem Paradise Lost, and the sense of personal despair felt by Blake, and by Milton, at the prospect of monarchy triumphing over republicanism.

Although it has the simplicity of a nursery rhyme, the poem has enormous political sophistication and technical subtlety. Look at the strange phrase "dark secret love" - where I think Blake is referring to powerful, sexual love. He puts an extra beat into the line there, an extra syllable, giving a strong and deliberate emphasis to the word "dark".

The poem was set to music by Benjamin Britten in the early years of the second world war where, symbolically, "the invisible worm" pointed to the Nazi threat and the "bed of crimson joy" was England.

Ah, Sunflower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the youth pined away with desire
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go.

This poem evokes a Walter Mittyish fantasy, the sense of always postponing something, always hoping there's something around the corner. In striking contrast to Songs of Innocence, the sunflower, rather than joyously rejoicing in life, is here tired and weary. But it's a permanently beautiful poem. The final line, with the Youth and the Virgin rising from their graves, seems to echo the resurrection.

As you'd expect with Blake, the tone is not ecclesiastical, but almost pantheistic. Blake was a Christian, but he was strongly opposed to authority and hierarchies. His Christianity was strictly egalitarian. He was once asked if he believed in the divinity of Christ and he replied, "He is the only God", and quickly added: "But so am I. And so are you."

"The Tyger" is a poem or song that I have known all my life, and a truly great work. In the designs that are an integral part of these poems, Blake included an illustration showing a rather jolly-looking cuddly tiger, but the poem is clearly much darker than this suggests.

David Erdman, a great authority on Blake, points out that in the 1790s the tiger was frequently used as an emblem of the revolutionary Paris mob. So this is a poem about revolution, about the god of wrath and the ungovernable passions of the mob. But the god of wrath is also the god of mercy, the god who created the lamb. The poem is asking: how did this natural and virtuous force, the spirit of popular dissent, create a tigerish world of massacre and bloodshed?

In the third verse, Blake seems to presage the ideas raised by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein: "And what shoulder and what art / Could twist the sinews of thy heart?" Shelley's monster is also a symbol of the mob, which was a new force in politics at that time. And there may be an echo of contemporary events in the lines "When the stars threw down their spears / And showered heaven with their tears". He's remembering the defeat of the British at York Town where, in 1781, "the British soldiers through the 13 states threw down their swords and muskets to the earth and ran from their encampments". Of course, there's a prophetic, almost wishful element to this, as if Blake were entreating the spears of soldiers to be transformed into tears, and into mercy and forgiveness. In an early draft of the poem, instead of "burnt the fire of thine eyes", he wrote "the cruel fire of thine eyes".

"London", an enormously powerful, apocalyptic poem in this collection, deepens the anger and despair that Blake feels.

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

He uses simple vocabulary and repetition to create a sense of incantation, as if a spell were being cast. The "chartered streets" refers to the system of commercial management, or charters, that existed in the city. The same system extends into nature, too: the "chartered Thames". Blake is saying that even the ancient and unencumbered river is managed for profit. Having repeated "chartered", his next repetition is grammatically more elaborate:

And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

The first "mark" means "observe" and the second means "signs", and by linking himself, grammatically with what he's observing, Blake makes us feel that he's intimately involved in the suffering he sees. We feel implicated, too. The repetitions of "mark" create a sense of inescapability, as if the misery, like the signs or "marks" of it, are all around us, and unavoidable. He uses the same device in the next stanza, "in every cry of every man", where he repeats "every" five times. Suffering is everywhere.

The lines about the chimney-sweeper and the soldier are technically fascinating, as Blake is using a completely original effect of pictorial compression. In the space of 10 words he makes the meaning skip from one sense to another, so that a noise becomes a colour.

How the chimney-sweeper's cry.
Every blackening church appals,

The shout of the chimney-sweep turns into the church walls which are blackened by pollution and by the commercial system that forces innocent children to sweep chimneys. Then the breath of the dying soldier turns into the crimson of the palace walls.

And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.

The effect is instantaneous, as vivid as a film, and you can almost see the soldier collapsing against the wall of the palace: perhaps he's been executed; perhaps he's defending the monarchy from revolutionaries. The palace stands for tyranny, obviously. In that sense, these are among the most subversive lines in English poetry - a cry of indignation against war and commercial abuse, or against what we might call the military-industrial complex. In fact, Blake isn't all that far from PB Shelley's call for a popular revolution: "Rise like lions out slumber / In unvanquishable number / Shed to earth your chains like dew / Ye are many they are few."

And in the final verse Blake goes even further. The harlot's curse has a double meaning. On one level, it's a shriek of anguish that causes the "newborn infant's tears". But the curse also refers to venereal disease transferred from a prostitute to a married man and then on to his wife, so that it "blights with plagues the marriage hearse".

Blake is equating the institutions of marriage and prostitution with death: he's attacking not just the church, but also the systems of abuse and hypocrisy that keep a corrupt society functioning.

By the end of the poem we have a sense that an era is coming to an end, as if there's a revolution ahead. This is dangerous writing. There was no guarantee that there wouldn't be a revolution in England. We know that Blake applauded the revolution of 1789 and wore the "bonnet rouge", or red cap, in support of the revolutionaries. But when news arrived of the executions and the Terror, he threw the cap away in disgust. And we can see these two political themes present throughout Songs of Experience. Blake is attacking the present system, but at the same time he's concerned about what will happen next. To overthrow the established order might lead anywhere. That's what "The Tyger" is about - the anxiety and fear of the forces that revolution might unleash. Of course, Blake wasn't free to make revolutionary statements openly. He evaded censorship and prosecution for sedition by encoding what are effectively republican poems in these prophetic books.

· Tom Paulin will be discussing Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience as part of Radio 3's William Blake series on March 5-8 at 11pm

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Blake once said, "Without contraries there is no progression", and it's clear that his poetry collections Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience were part of a single scheme, like a painting with light and shade. When he published both together, he subtitled the volume "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul".

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simple act, it was the work of a few moments, but it triggered an epic era of political and religious convulsions that changed the shape of Europe. On 31 October 1517, a monk named Martin Luther walked to a church in the German town of Wittenberg and nailed a document - his 95 theses - to its wooden doors, lighting the fuse of the Reformation.

On Monday an ecumenical service led by Pope Francis at Lund cathedral in southern Sweden will herald a year of events running up to the 500th anniversary of the move that resulted in the greatest schism in western Christianity and a string of religious wars - and which has sectarian echoes today on the football terraces of northern Europe.

Christian leaders and congregations will spend the next 12 months consolidating moves towards greater cooperation and dialogue after centuries of division. In the first papal visit to Sweden in more than 25 years, Francis will lead prayers asking "forgiveness for divisions perpetuated by Christians from the two traditions". On Tuesday, he will celebrate mass in Malmö before around 10,000 people.

In Germany, leaders of the Catholic and main Protestant churches have issued a joint text calling for a "healing of memories" of past divisions. An ecumenical pilgrimage to the Holy Land aimed at highlighting common roots despite separation has just concluded.

The commemorations are the latest step in a slow rapprochement between the Catholic and Protestant traditions - pursued by Francis, who has put ecumenicalism and healing past wounds at the heart of his papacy. The moves are not without controversy, however. "There are rightwing Roman Catholics who find the whole thing profoundly distasteful," said Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of church history at Oxford and author of The Reformation: A History. "But they're the sort of people who hate the present pope anyway.

"On the other side, you've got the remnants of high-temperature Protestantism. In Northern Ireland, for instance, you'll have preachers saying how dreadful all this is."

A recent document signed by dozens of Protestant evangelicals and entitled "Is the Reformation Over?" says that although cooperation between the two traditions should be encouraged in areas of common concern, "the issues that gave birth to the Reformation 500 years ago are still very much alive in the 21st century for the whole church".

The meeting of Pope Francis and Archbishop Antje Jackelén in Sweden will underscore one of the big divides between their churches: the role of women. Photograph: AFP/Getty

According to historians, Luther never intended his 95 theses - which may or may not actually have been nailed to the church doors - to spark a revolution. "He started by wanting reform. He never planned to split away from the Latin church; that wasn't where it began," said Bishop William Kenney, the Catholic co-chair of the international dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics, who will accompany the pope to Sweden.

Nevertheless, Luther's theses, written in Latin, fundamentally challenged the authority and elitism of the Roman Catholic church. They were a backlash against increasing corruption and in particular the highly profitable sale of indulgences - promoted as fast-track tickets to heaven - to fund the building of St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Luther declared that when it came to "justification" - avoiding hell, gaining admission to heaven - there could be no mediation, no brokering by the church. Salvation was a matter between an individual and God.

This was indeed revolutionary. Swiftly translated into German and other European languages, Luther's ideas were the talk of Europe within weeks, spreading courtesy of the new printing presses - the Google and Twitter of the medieval era - and triggering religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval.

Rome condemned the monk as a heretic, removed him from the priesthood and banned his writings. In response, Luther publicly burned the papal bull, or edict. The sale of indulgences plummeted and his ideas started to take hold.

"It released something that still is important: a challenge to authority that has been good for the human community," said Richard Holloway, the now agnostic former Anglican bishop of Edinburgh and author of A Little History of Religion, published this summer.

"It had a dark side, but it did move the religious debate on from divine authority imposed from above, and brought into the conversation a sense of protest against that. I think it would have happened in some other way even if it hadn't been kicked off by Luther. Humans are revolutionary species that are constantly revising and challenging their institutions."

Luther's challenge to the once impregnable Catholic church was taken up by others, including John Calvin, whose ideas spread from Geneva to Scotland, France and the Low Countries. In Germany, the new ideas inspired the Peasants' War of 1524-5. In England, Henry VIII -motivated more by lust and the desire for a male heir - embarked on his own, less clear-cut, separation from the Catholic church.

Rome launched a counter-reformation but by the end of the 16th century almost all of northern Europe was Protestant, albeit fractured into warring groups.

As well as bloodshed, the Reformation unleashed terrible destruction of religious heritage and art. In England, more than 800 monasteries, abbeys, nunneries and friaries were seized, libraries destroyed, manuscripts lost, treasures stripped and works of art appropriated. But the Reformation also gave rise to new forms of art, music and literature.

It's the culmination of a great deal of work on the part of the Lutherans and the papacy over the past 20 years

Diarmaid MacCulloch historian

"The dissolution of the monasteries was a tragedy," said Holloway. "A lot of beauty was lost for ever. But it also released the power of the individual, the power of the small group, against the mighty institution. Loss and gain, that's our story."

The German priest and theologian at its centre was complicated, argumentative and bad-tempered, according to Nick Baines, the bishop of Leeds, who will tomorrow deliver a sermon about the Reformation in the monastery at Erfurt, central Germany, where Luther once lived as a monk.

"He said some terrible things about Jews," Baines said, "which in turn had terrible consequences four centuries later. And he wasn't exactly a proto-feminist. He was grasped by a concept of grace yet he didn't exercise grace towards other people. He was a very brave man, but must have been a nightmare to be around. But most people who change the world are."

It took Catholics some time to see the merits of the challenges posed by Luther, but the church needed reform, according to Kenney. "We had the problem of the sale of indulgences. There was a certain amount of corruption in parts of the church. I do think it was ultimately a good thing for the Catholic church - the Reformation, not the splitting of the church. It was forced to think again, to renew itself, and that is positive."

Yet it took until 1999 for the Catholic and Lutheran churches to agree on a joint declaration that resolved many of the theological issues at the heart of the split. "That was an enormous step forward, and we're now trying to work out what the consequences of that are," added Kenney.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict engaged in some dialogue with the Lutherans and other Protestants, but Francis has really pushed it forward. "For 500 years, Europe has had this huge fault line between Catholics and Protestants," said MacCulloch. "Now the pope is going to a Lutheran country to emphasise the division is in the past. It's the culmination of a great deal of work on the part of the Lutherans and the papacy over the past 20 years."

Francis had "softened the tone", said Holloway. "The conversation will get warmer and sweeter, and who knows where it will lead. But the Roman Catholic church is a bit like a colossal aircraft carrier, and it takes a long time to make even tiny modifications.

"My hunch is that we're probably moving to a stage where we'll have the religious equivalent of multiculturalism. We won't seek to merge, as it were, but we'll seek to see the value in differences as long as they're balanced with a sympathetic tolerance towards each other."

From a Catholic perspective, Kenney said he thought there was a "realistic possibility" that the traditions could unite. "But there are big questions that need to be resolved," he added.

Among those is the issue of women. Despite his warmth towards women members of the Catholic church and his frequent acknowledgement of the role they play in lay leadership, Pope Francis has insisted that "the door is closed" to women priests, although he has floated the possibility of female deacons.

The Lutherans have no such compunction. The Church of Sweden has had women pastors for more than half a century, the Danes for almost 70 years. And the gulf between the two churches on this issue will be underscored this week when Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic church, comes face to face with the head of the Church of Sweden, Archbishop Antje Jackelén - a woman.

KEY DATES

1517 Publication of Luther's 95 theses arguing that salvation depends on faith alone

1521 Luther refuses to recant and is formally excommunicated by Pope Leo X

1522 His translation of the New Testament into common German gives ordinary people access to the scriptures and fuels criticism of the Roman church

1524 German peasants, partly inspired by Luther, rise up against feudal overlords

1526 Publication of William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament

1534 Act of Supremacy, making Henry VIII head of the church in England, heralds the English Reformation

1545 Council of Trent opens, to clarify doctrine and reform the Catholic church

1618 Revolt in Bohemia starts Thirty Years War across Europe

1648 Peace of Westphalia entrenches Protestantism in northern Europe, but the consequences of Luther's revolt reverberate for centuries to come

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After 500 years of schism, will the rift of the Reformation finally be healed?

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simple act, it was the work of a few moments, but it triggered an epic era of political and religious convulsions that changed the shape of Europe. On 31 October 1517, a monk named Martin Luther walked to a church in the German town of Wittenberg and nailed a document - his 95 theses - to its wooden doors, lighting the fuse of the Reformation.

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Reading to help you understand the Holy Thursday poems.

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'Children of the poor should not be educated in such manner as to set them above the occupations of humble life, or so as to make them uncomfortable among their equals'.
Sarah Trimmer, Reflections upon the Education of Children in Charity Schools; with the Outlines of a Plan of Appropriate Instruction for the Children of the Poor (London: T. Longman and J. and F. Rivington, 1792), p. 8.

Girls in the Bristol Orphan House, c. 1905. Image taken from Centenary Memorial 1805-1905 (Bristol: J. Wright and Co., 1905). Copyright, and reproduced by permission, of the Bristol Central Library.

The Charity School Movement

The Charity School movement began at the end of the 17th century, and it continued to develop in the 18th century. At this time escalating numbers of children were growing up in destitution due to rapid urbanisation and a rising population, which came to the attention of philanthropists and reformers. The destitute could receive poor relief from their parish under the Poor Laws. The Poor Law was funded by property owners paying rates to provide assistance to the poor of the same parish. Such relief came in many forms, including cash payment and donations of rent, fuel, food, clothes and, in some cases, employment. The growing public interest in the setting up and running of schools for the social and religious benefit of impoverished children was taken up by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in 1698. The Society, founded in London by clergy and laymen, sought to give an education to the children in the hope that it would prevent ignorance, vice and debauchery. The SPCK gave advice to local parish groups hoping to set up schools. They provided financial support, a curriculum and advice to teachers on good educational practice. The SPCK charity schools instructed children of the poor in the Christian religion, based on the doctrines of the Church of England, to prevent the influence of other denominations. After the Civil War in 1651 many new sects had emerged, such as Baptists, Quakers, Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Dissenters and non-conformists refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the established Anglican Church. They similarly wanted to instil the young with their beliefs and practices.

Bell's and Lancaster's Monitorial System

In the 19th century, two individuals contributed to the development and improvement of educating poor children: Dr Andrew Bell (1753-1832) and Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838). While working in a male orphanage in Madras in 1789, Bell devised the Monitorial System. This involved older pupils instructing younger scholars and was devised to rectify the lack of teachers. He published an account of his teaching scheme, An Experiment in Education (1797), and some English schools started to use his technique a few years later. Eventually, this method was adopted by the educational institutions of the Church of England in 1811, which became known as 'National Schools'.

Lancaster, a Quaker, set up a school in 1798 in Borough Road to give an education to non-conformist children. Lancaster's school utilised a very similar Monitorial System, which became known as the 'Lancastrian System'. Non-conformist schools following this system eventually joined together as 'The British and Foreign School Society' in 1814.

Teaching classes within these schools could vary from accommodating a single group of 40 children in a room, to several groups in a hall being taught by different monitors. This teaching technique became popular around the world in the 19th century. It is probable that some of the schools in this exhibition, such as Ackworth, used older pupils as monitors, transmitting their knowledge and skills to their younger contemporaries.

An Education for Girls

The education for poor children was meant to be useful and appropriate to their position in life. Schools across the country followed a similar curriculum for girls, such as teaching reading (mostly from the Bible), needlework and singing; it was a limited curriculum and differed from that of the boys. Some schools also provided instruction in writing, spelling and arithmetic, although this depended on the founder's attitude. Not everyone believed that writing and arithmetic were necessary or suitable for the poor, particularly the female poor. Depending on their situation and location, girls could be educated in dame schools, village schools, Sunday Schools, or orphanages. The education that underprivileged girls received trained them to be good and efficient servants, or seamstresses in later life. Their instruction also included moral and religious teaching as well as social discipline.

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Charity Schools and Education for the Poor

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'Children of the poor should not be educated in such manner as to set them above the occupations of humble life, or so as to make them uncomfortable among their equals'. Sarah Trimmer, Reflections upon the Education of Children in Charity Schools; with the Outlines of a Plan of Appropriate Instruction for the Children of the Poor (London: T.

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The Little Black Boy

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Charles Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729 - 14 December 1780) was a British abolitionist, writer and composer. Born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, Sancho was sold into slavery in the Spanish colony of New Granada. After his parents died, Sancho's owner took the two-year-old orphan to England and gifted him to three Greenwich sisters, where he remained their slave for eighteen years. Unable to bear being a servant to them, Sancho ran away to the Montagu House, whose owner had taught him how to read and encouraged Sancho's budding interest in literature. After spending some time as a servant in the household, Sancho left and started his own business as a shopkeeper, while also starting to write and publish various essays, plays and books.

Sancho quickly became involved in the nascent British abolitionist movement, which sought to outlaw both the slave trade and the institution of slavery itself, and he quickly became one of the most devoted supporters of the movement. Sancho's status as a male property-owner meant he was legally qualified to vote in a general-election, a right he exercised in 1774 and 1780, becoming the first known Black Briton to have voted in Britain. Gaining fame in Britain as "the extraordinary Negro", to British abolitionists, Sancho became a symbol of the humanity of Africans and the immorality of the slave trade and slavery. Sancho died in 1780, with his The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited and published two years after his death, being one of the earliest accounts of African slavery written in English from a first-hand experience.

Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, in what was known as the Middle Passage. His mother died not long after arriving in the Spanish colony of New Granada, which formed parts of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. His father reportedly took his own life rather than live as a slave. Sancho's owner took the young orphan, barely two years old, to England and gave him to three unmarried sisters living together in Greenwich, where he lived from 1731 to 1749. The Duke of Montagu, a frequent visitor to the sisters, became impressed by Sancho's intellect, frankness, and amiability. The Duke not only encouraged Sancho to read, but also lent him books from his personal library at Blackheath.

Sancho's informal education made his lack of freedom at Greenwich unbearable, and he ran away to Montagu House, Blackheath in 1749. For two years until her death in 1751, Sancho worked as a butler for the Duchess of Montagu at her residence, where he immersed himself in music, poetry, reading, and writing. Upon her death in 1751, Sancho received an annuity of £30 (about £7000 in 2020 according to the Bank of England inflation calculator) and a year's salary. On 17 December 1758 he married a West Indian woman, Anne Osborne, becoming a devoted husband and father. They had seven children: Frances Joanna, Ann Alice, Elizabeth Bruce, Jonathan William, Lydia, Katherine Margaret, and William Leach Osborne. Around the time of the birth of their third child, Sancho became a valet to George Montagu, the son-in-law of his previous patron. Sancho remained a valet until 1773.

In 1768, British artist Thomas Gainsborough painted a portrait of Sancho at the same time as the Duchess of Montagu sat for her portrait by Gainsborough as well. By the late 1760s, Sancho had already become well accomplished and was considered by many to be a man of refinement. In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Sancho wrote to Anglo-Irish novelist Laurence Sterne encouraging the famous writer to use his pen to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade.

That subject, handled in your striking manner, would ease the yoke (perhaps) of many - but if only of one - Gracious God! - what a feast to a benevolent heart!

In July 1766 Sancho's letter was received by Sterne shortly after he had just finished writing a conversation between his fictional characters, Corporal Trim and his brother Tom in Tristram Shandy, wherein Tom described the mistreatment of an African servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon that he had visited. Sterne's widely publicised 27 July 1766 response to Sancho's letter became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature.

There is a strange coincidence, Sancho, in the little events (as well as in the great ones) of this world: for I had been writing a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl, and my eyes had scarce done smarting with it, when your letter of recommendation in behalf of so many of her brethren and sisters, came to me - but why her brethren? - or your's, Sancho! any more than mine? It is by the finest tints, and most insensible gradations, that nature descends from the fairest face about St. James's, to the sootiest complexion in Africa: at which tint of these, is it, that the ties of blood are to cease? and how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, 'ere mercy is to vanish with them? - but 'tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one half of the world to use the other half of it like brutes, & then endeavour to make 'em so."

Following the publication of the Sancho-Sterne letters, Sancho became widely known as a man of letters. Sancho, a British subject and voter in Westminster, noted that despite being in the country since the age of two he felt he was "only a lodger, and hardly that." In other writings he describes his life: "Went by water - had a coach home - were gazed at - followed, etc. etc. - but not much abused." On another occasion, he writes: "They stopped us in the town and most generously insulted us."

In 1774 with help from Montagu, Sancho, suffering from ill health with gout, opened a grocery shop, offering merchandise such as tobacco, sugar and tea, at 19 Charles Street in London's Mayfair, Westminster. These were goods then mostly produced by slaves in the West Indies.

Ignatius Sancho is the first known person of African descent to vote in a British general election. As an independent male property owner, with a house and grocery shop on Charles Street, he had the right to cast his vote for the Westminster Members of Parliament in the 1774 and 1780 elections.

-Record of Ignatius Sancho's vote in the general election, October 1774, British Library.

As a shopkeeper Sancho enjoyed more time to socialise, correspond with his many friends, share his enjoyment of literature, and his shop had many visitors. He wrote and published a Theory of Music, though no copy is extant today. There are 62 known compositions by Sancho, which were printed in four collections in London between ca. 1767 and 1779: Minuets Cotillons & Country Dances, book I (ca. 1767), containing 24 dances; A Collection of New Songs (ca. 1769), six songs on words of William Shakespeare, David Garrick, Anacreon, and unidentified authors; Minuets, &c., &c., book II (ca. 1770), with 20 dances; and Twelve Country Dances for the Year 1779. In addition, he wrote two plays. As a financially independent male householder living in London, he qualified to vote in the parliamentary elections of 1774 and 1780; he was the first person of African origin known to have voted in Britain. At this time he also wrote letters and in newspapers, under his own name and under the pseudonym "Africanus".

Among his acquaintances were figures such as Thomas Gainsborough, the Shakespearean actor David Garrick, violin virtuoso Felice Giardini, the preacher William Dodd, the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, and the novelist Laurence Sterne. Nollekens gave Sancho a plaster cast of his 1766 marble bust of Sterne. Sancho received many prominent visitors at his shop, including statesman and abolitionist Charles James Fox, who successfully steered a resolution through Parliament pledging it to abolish the slave trade. He oversaw a Foreign Slave Trade Bill in spring 1806 that prohibited British subjects from participating in the trading of slaves with the colonies of Britain's wartime enemies, thus eliminating two-thirds of the slave trade passing through British ports.

Ignatius Sancho died from the effects of gout on 14 December 1780 and was buried in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Westminster. There is no memorial at the church, as the grave stones (which lie flat) in the churchyard were covered over with grass in 1880 and no inscription was found for him when a record was made of the existing epitaphs. He was the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press.

Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho

While his correspondence often included domestic issues, it also commented on the political and literary life in 18th-century Britain. One of his more famous series of letters includes his eye-witness accounts of the Gordon Riots in June 1780. The angry mob passed outside his shop on Charles Street. The protest that began when Protestants protested against parliamentary extension of Roman Catholic enfranchisement grew into a violent mob of 100,000 looting and burning parts of London.

There is at this present moment at least a hundred thousand poor, miserable, ragged rabble, from 12 to 60 years of age, with blue cockades in their hats - besides half as many women and children, all parading the streets, the bridge, the park, ready for any and every mischief. Gracious God! What's the matter now? I was obliged to leave off - the shouts of the mob, the horrid clashing of swords, and the clutter of a multitude in swiftest motion drew me to the door, when everyone in the street was employed in shutting up shop. It is now just five o'clock - the ballad-singers are exhasting their musical talents with the downfall of Popery, S-h and N-h, Lord S-h narrowly escaped with his life about an hour since' the mob seized his chariot going to the house, broke his glasses and, in struggling to get his lordship out, they somehow have cut his face.

In 1782 Frances Crewe, a correspondent of Sancho, arranged for 160 of his letters to be published in the form of two volumes entitled The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. The book sold very well, with more than 2,000 subscribing to it. His widow received in royalties more than £500, equivalent to £63,970 in 2020. Joseph Jekyll provided a memoir of Sancho for the first edition, and four more editions had been issued by 1803.

Sancho's son, William Leach Osborne Sancho, inherited the shop on Charles Street, Mayfair, and transformed it into a printing and book-selling business. In 1803 at this shop he printed a fifth edition of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho with Memoirs of His Life by Joseph Jekyll, with a frontispiece engraving by Bartolozzi.

''I am Sir an Affrican - with two ffs - if you please - & proud am I to be of a country that knows no politicians - nor lawyers - nor [word deleted] ... nor thieves of any denomination save Natural....''

Sancho was unusually blunt in his response to a letter from Jack Wingrave, John Wingrave's son. Jack wrote about his negative reaction to people of colour based on his own experience in India during the 1770s. Sancho's response was as such:

I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country (which as a resident I love - and for its freedom - and for the many blessings I enjoy in it - shall ever have my warmest wishes, prayers and blessings); I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country's conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East - West-Indies - and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators - indeed of all Christian navigators - is money - money - money - for which I do not pretend to blame them - Commerce was meant by the goodness of the Deity to diffuse the various goods of the earth into every part - to unite mankind in the blessed chains of brotherly love - society - and mutual dependence: the enlightened Christian should diffuse the riches of the Gospel of peace - with the commodities of his respective land - Commerce attended with strict honesty - and with Religion for its companion - would be a blessing to every shore it touched at. In Africa, the poor wretched natives blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil - are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing: the Christians' abominable traffic for slaves and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors to enflame their national madness - and powder - and bad fire-arms - to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping.

A plaque to the memory of Sancho was unveiled on 15 June 2007, by Nick Raynsford, MP for Greenwich, on the remaining wall of Montagu House on the south-west boundary of Greenwich Park. The plaque was funded by the Friends of Greenwich Park to commemorate the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, made law in 1807. A second plaque to his memory is on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

When the City of Westminster commemorated the bicentenary by creating a walking tour of Westminster highlighting events and individuals involved in the campaign to abolish the slave trade, they included 19 Charles Street. This was a collaboration with historian S. I. Martin, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Palace of Westminster, Tate Britain, Westminster City Archives, and Westminster City Council.

Sancho features on the list of "100 Great Black Britons".

The Portrait of an African (oil on canvas 61.8 x 51.5 cm, c. 1757-59; held in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, Devon) is probably of Ignatius Sancho, although it was previously thought to be of Olaudah Equiano, and is now attributed to Allan Ramsay (1713-1784). A full account of the attribution to Ramsay and identification of Sancho is contained in the article "The Lost African" published in magazine, August 2006.

In 2015, a play based on the life of Ignatius Sancho, entitled Sancho: An Act of Remembrance, written and performed by Paterson Joseph, was staged at Oxford and Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. From 4 to 16 June 2018 the play had its London premiere at Wilton's Music Hall.

On 1 October 2020, Google commemorated British Black History Month by honouring Sancho with a Doodle.

Facs. Set for the harpsichord. (London: Thompson, 2014). Interpreted by V. Webster, illus. D. Durant, research S Petchy and P Cooper. Pbk 97 pp.

Dances for a Princess, humbly dedicated (with permission) to the Princess Royal by Her Royal Highnesses Most Obedient Servant Ignatius Sancho.

By Ignatius Sancho, 191 pp; ed. & intro. by S. Petchey (64 pp). 22 dances & facs. of their music and two more pieces. A recording of these dances is available from Green Ginger at https://greengingerband.co.uk. ISBN 978-1-5272-3701-8.

John Madin, "Abolition: Trading faces", BBC - Devon, 28 October 2014.

Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life. Vol. I. London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1782.

Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life. Vol. II. London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1782.

Carey, Brycchan. "Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters". Brycchan Carey's comprehensive collection of resources for the study of Ignatius Sancho.

The Music of Ignatius Sancho

Westminster Council's Abolition of the Slave Trade Commemoration website

Works by or about Ignatius Sancho in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

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Charles Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729 - 14 December 1780) was a British abolitionist, writer and composer. Born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, Sancho was sold into slavery in the Spanish colony of New Granada. After his parents died, Sancho's owner took the two-year-old orphan to England and gifted him to three Greenwich sisters, where he remained their slave for eighteen years.

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Stanza III and IV

Lines 9-12
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

This stanza continues the questioning of who/what the creator of the Tyger is (notice the "And" continues the thought from the previous stanza).

What "shoulder" roughly means what kind of bodily strength could create the Tyger ("twist the sinews of thy heart").

What "art" refers to the skill that could put the Tyger all together.

Lines 11 and 12 are more mysterious, in that they're really vague. From earlier in the poem we know that hands and eyes frame (stanza 1), hands seize (line 8), shoulders twist (lines 9 and 10), but what do these hands and feet do after the heart begins to beat? Whose hands and feet? Again, not sure.

Whatever the answer, the use of "dread" increases the same big, powerful, mysterious quality known as "the sublime."

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

These lines further question how the Tyger was created.

Blake uses the metaphor of the blacksmith, who forms metal with a hammer, furnace (fire), and anvil.

The stanza is very rhythmic, adding further to the chant-like quality that we talked about in lines 1-2.

We also get the sense that the pace and volume is picking up, since the questions are now coming faster and Blake uses his first exclamation point.

Lines 13-16

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JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. Stanza III and IV And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart?And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand?

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The Poetry Foundation - Link to the page on William Blake

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Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in popularity. In his Life of William Blake (1863) Alexander Gilchrist warned his readers that Blake "neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work'y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself 'a divine child,' whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth." Yet Blake himself believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of his peers. Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of great social and political change that profoundly influenced his writing. In addition to being considered one of the most visionary of English poets and one of the great progenitors of English Romanticism, his visual artwork is highly regarded around the world.

Blake was born on November 28, 1757. Unlike many well-known writers of his day, Blake was born into a family of moderate means. His father, James, was a hosier, and the family lived at 28 Broad Street in London in an unpretentious but "respectable" neighborhood. In all, seven children were born to James and Catherine Wright Blake, but only five survived infancy. Blake seems to have been closest to his youngest brother, Robert, who died young.

By all accounts Blake had a pleasant and peaceful childhood, made even more pleasant by skipping any formal schooling. As a young boy he wandered the streets of London and could easily escape to the surrounding countryside. Even at an early age, however, his unique mental powers would prove disquieting. According to Gilchrist, on one ramble he was startled to "see a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars." His parents were not amused at such a story, and only his mother's pleadings prevented him from receiving a beating. His parents did, however, encourage his artistic talents, and the young Blake was enrolled at the age of 10 in Pars' drawing school. The expense of continued formal training in art was a prohibitive, and the family decided that at the age of 14 William would be apprenticed to a master engraver. At first his father took him to William Ryland, a highly respected engraver. William, however, resisted the arrangement telling his father, "I do not like the man's face: it looks as if he will live to be hanged!" The grim prophecy was to come true 12 years later. Instead of Ryland the family settled on a lesser-known engraver, James Basire. Basire seems to have been a good master, and Blake was a good student of the craft.

At the age of 21, Blake left Basire's apprenticeship and enrolled for a time in the newly formed Royal Academy. He earned his living as a journeyman engraver. Booksellers employed him to engrave illustrations for publications ranging from novels such as Don Quixote to serials such as Ladies' Magazine.

One incident at this time affected Blake deeply. In June of 1780 riots broke out in London incited by the anti-Catholic preaching of Lord George Gordon and by resistance to continued war against the American colonists. Houses, churches, and prisons were burned by uncontrollable mobs bent on destruction. On one evening, whether by design or by accident, Blake found himself at the front of the mob that burned Newgate prison. These images of violent destruction and unbridled revolution gave Blake powerful material for works such as Europe (1794) and America (1793).

Not all of the young man's interests were confined to art and politics. After one ill-fated romance, Blake met Catherine Boucher. After a year's courtship the couple were married on August 18, 1782. The parish registry shows that Catherine, like many women of her class, could not sign her own name. Blake soon taught her to read and to write, and under Blake's tutoring she also became an accomplished draftsman, helping him in the execution of his designs. By all accounts the marriage was a successful one, but no children were born to the Blakes.

Blake's friend John Flaxman introduced Blake to the bluestocking Harriet Mathew, wife of the Rev. Henry Mathew, whose drawing room was often a meeting place for artists and musicians. There Blake gained favor by reciting and even singing his early poems. Thanks to the support of Flaxman and Mrs. Mathew, a thin volume of poems was published under the title Poetical Sketches (1783). Many of these poems are imitations of classical models, much like the sketches of models of antiquity the young artist made to learn his trade. Even here, however, one sees signs of Blake's protest against war and the tyranny of kings. Only about 50 copies of Poetical Sketches are known to have been printed. Blake's financial enterprises also did not fare well. In 1784, after his father's death, Blake used part of the money he inherited to set up shop as a printseller with his friend James Parker. The Blakes moved to 27 Broad Street, next door to the family home and close to Blake's brothers. The business did not do well, however, and the Blakes soon moved out.

Of more concern to Blake was the deteriorating health of his favorite brother, Robert. Blake tended to his brother in his illness and according to Gilchrist watched the spirit of his brother escape his body in his death: "At the last solemn moment, the visionary eyes beheld the released spirit ascend heaven ward through the matter-of-fact ceiling, 'clapping its hands for joy.'"

Blake always felt the spirit of Robert lived with him. He even announced that it was Robert who informed him how to illustrate his poems in "illuminated writing." Blake's technique was to produce his text and design on a copper plate with an impervious liquid. The plate was then dipped in acid so that the text and design remained in relief. That plate could be used to print on paper, and the final copy would be then hand colored.

After experimenting with this method in a series of aphorisms entitled There is No Natural Religion and All Religions are One (1788?), Blake designed the series of plates for the poems entitled Songs of Innocence and dated the title page 1789. Blake continued to experiment with the process of illuminated writing and in 1794 combined the early poems with companion poems entitled Songs of Experience. The title page of the combined set announces that the poems show "the two Contrary States of the Human Soul."

The introductory poems to each series display Blake's dual image of the poet as both a "piper" and a "Bard." As man goes through various stages of innocence and experience in the poems, the poet also is in different stages of innocence and experience. The pleasant lyrical aspect of poetry is shown in the role of the "piper" while the more somber prophetic nature of poetry is displayed by the stern Bard.

The dual role played by the poet is Blake's interpretation of the ancient dictum that poetry should both delight and instruct. More important, for Blake the poet speaks both from the personal experience of his own vision and from the "inherited" tradition of ancient Bards and prophets who carried the Holy Word to the nations.

The two states of innocence and experience are not always clearly separate in the poems, and one can see signs of both states in many poems. The companion poems titled "Holy Thursday" are on the same subject, the forced marching of poor children to St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The speaker in the state of innocence approves warmly of the progression of children:

The brutal irony is that in this world of truly "innocent" children there are evil men who repress the children, round them up like herd of cattle, and force them to show their piety. In this state of innocence, experience is very much present.

If experience has a way of creeping into the world of innocence, innocence also has a way of creeping into experience. The golden land where the "sun does shine" and the "rain does fall" is a land of bountiful goodness and innocence. But even here in this blessed land, there are children starving. The sharp contrast between the two conditions makes the social commentary all the more striking and supplies the energy of the poem.

The storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789 and the agonies of the French Revolution sent shock waves through England. Some hoped for a corresponding outbreak of liberty in England while others feared a breakdown of the social order. In much of his writing Blake argues against the monarchy. In his early Tiriel (written circa 1789) Blake traces the fall of a tyrannical king.

Politics was surely often the topic of conversation at the publisher Joseph Johnson's house, where Blake was often invited. There Blake met important literary and political figures such as William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Paine. According to one legend Blake is even said to have saved Paine's life by warning him of his impending arrest. Whether or not that is true, it is clear that Blake was familiar with some of the leading radical thinkers of his day.

In The French Revolution Blake celebrates the rise of democracy in France and the fall of the monarchy. King Louis represents a monarchy that is old and dying. The sick king is lethargic and unable to act: "From my window I see the old mountains of France, like aged men, fading away." The "voice of the people" demands the removal of the king's troops from Paris, and their departure at the end of the first book signals the triumph of democracy.

On the title page for book one of The French Revolution Blake announces that it is "A Poem in Seven Books," but none of the other books has been found. Johnson never published the poem, perhaps because of fear of prosecution, or perhaps because Blake himself withdrew it from publication. Johnson did have cause to be nervous. Erdman points out that in the same year booksellers were thrown in jail for selling the works of Thomas Paine.

In America (1793) Blake also addresses the idea of revolution-less as a commentary on the actual revolution in America as a commentary on universal principles that are at work in any revolution. The figure of Orc represents all revolutions:

The same force that causes the colonists to rebel against King George is the force that overthrows the perverted rules and restrictions of established religions.

The revolution in America suggests to Blake a similar revolution in England. In the poem the king, like the ancient pharaohs of Egypt, sends pestilence to America to punish the rebels, but the colonists are able to redirect the forces of destruction to England. Erdman suggests that Blake is thinking of the riots in England during the war and the chaotic condition of the English troops, many of whom deserted. Writing this poem in the 1790s, Blake also surely imagined the possible effect of the French Revolution on England.

Another product of the radical 1790s is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Written and etched between 1790 and 1793, Blake's poem brutally satirizes oppressive authority in church and state.

The powerful opening of the poem suggests a world of violence: "Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air / Hungry clouds swag on the deep." The fire and smoke suggest a battlefield and the chaos of revolution. The cause of that chaos is analyzed at the beginning of the poem. The world has been turned upside down. The "just man" has been turned away from the institutions of church and state, and in his place are fools and hypocrites who preach law and order but create chaos. Those who proclaim restrictive moral rules and oppressive laws as "goodness" are in themselves evil. Hence to counteract this repression, Blake announces that he is of the "Devil's Party" that will advocate freedom and energy and gratified desire.

The "Proverbs of Hell" are clearly designed to shock the reader out of his commonplace notion of what is good and what is evil:

Prisons are built with stones of Law,
Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

It is the oppressive nature of church and state that has created the repulsive prisons and brothels. Sexual energy is not an inherent evil, but the repression of that energy is. The preachers of morality fail to understand that God is in all things, including the sexual nature of men and women.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell contains many of the basic religious ideas developed in the major prophecies. Blake analyzes the development of organized religion as a perversion of ancient visions: "The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & Numerous senses could perceive." Ancient man created those gods to express his vision of the spiritual properties that he perceived in the physical world. The gods began to take on a life of their own separate from man: "Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood." The "system" or organized religion keeps man from perceiving the spiritual in the physical. The gods are seen as separate from man, and an elite race of priests is developed to approach the gods: "Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast." Instead of looking for God on remote altars, Blake warns, man should look within.

In August of 1790 Blake moved from his house on Poland Street across the Thames to the area known as Lambeth. The Blakes lived in the house for 10 years, and the surrounding neighborhood often becomes mythologized in his poetry. Felpham was a "lovely vale," a place of trees and open meadows, but it also contained signs of human cruelty, such as the house for orphans. At his home Blake kept busy not only with his illuminated poetry but also with the daily chore of making money. During the 1790s Blake earned fame as an engraver and was glad to receive numerous commissions.

One story told by Blake's friend Thomas Butts shows how much the Blakes enjoyed the pastoral surroundings of Lambeth. At the end of Blake's garden was a small summer house, and coming to call on the Blakes one day Butts was shocked to find the couple stark naked: "Come in!" cried Blake; "it's only Adam and Eve you know!" The Blakes were reciting passages from Paradise Lost, apparently "in character."Sexual freedom is addressed in Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), also written during the Lambeth period.

Between 1793 and 1795 Blake produced a remarkable collection of illuminated works that have come to be known as the "Minor Prophecies." In Europe (1794), The First Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Los (1795), The Song of Los (1795), and The Book of Ahania (1795) Blake develops the major outlines of his universal mythology. In these poems Blake examines the fall of man. In Blake's mythology man and God were once united, but man separated himself from God and became weaker and weaker as he became further divided.

The narrative of the universal mythology is interwoven with the historical events of Blake's own time. The execution of King Louis XVI in 1793 led to an inevitable reaction, and England soon declared war on France. England's participation in the war against France and its attempt to quell the revolutionary spirit is addressed in Europe. The very force of that repression, however, will cause its opposite to appear in the revolutionary figure of Orc: "And in the vineyards of reds France appear'd the light of his fury."

The causes of that repression are examined in The First Book of Urizen. The word Urizen suggests "your reason" and also "horizon." He represents that part of the mind that constantly defines and limits human thought and action. In the frontispiece to the poem he is pictured as an aged man hunched over a massive book writing with both hands in other books. Behind him stand the tablets of the 10 commandments, and Urizen is surely writing other "thou shalt nots" for others to follow. His twisted anatomical position shows the perversity of what should be the "human form divine."

The poem traces the birth of Urizen as a separate part of the human mind. He insists on laws for all to follow:

One command, one joy, one desire
One curse, one weight, one measure,
One King, one God, one Law.

Urizen's repressive laws bring only further chaos and destruction. Appalled by the chaos he himself created, Urizen fashions a world apart.

The process of separation continues as the character of Los is divided from Urizen. Los, the "Eternal Prophet," represents another power of the human mind. Los forges the creative aspects of the mind into works of art. Like Urizen he is a limiter, but the limitations he creates are productive and necessary. In the poem Los forms "nets and gins" to bring an end to Urizen's continual chaotic separation.

Los is horrified by the figure of the bound Urizen and is separated by his pity, "for Pity divides the Soul." Los undergoes a separation into a male and female form. His female form is called Enitharmon, and her creation is viewed with horror:

Eternity shudder'd when they saw
Man begetting his likeness
On his own divided image.

This separation into separate sexual identities is yet another sign of man's fall. The "Eternals" contain both male and female forms within themselves, but man is divided and weak.

Enitharmon gives birth to the fiery Orc, whose violent birth gives some hope for radical change in a fallen world, but Orc is bound in chains by Los, now a victim of jealousy. Enitharmon bears an "enormous race," but it is a race of men and women who are weak and divided and who have lost sight of eternity.

In his fallen state man has limited senses and fails to perceive the infinite. Divided from God and caught by the narrow traps of religion, he sees God only as a crude lawgiver who must be obeyed.

The Book of Los also examines man's fall and the binding of Urizen, but from the perspective of Los, whose task it is to place a limit on the chaotic separation begun by Urizen. The decayed world is again one of ignorance where there is "no light from the fires." From this chaos the bare outlines of the human form begin to appear:

Many ages of groans, till there grew
Branchy forms organizing the Human
Into finite inflexible organs.

The human senses are pale imitations of the true senses that allow one to perceive eternity. Urizen's world where man now lives is spoken of as an "illusion" because it masks the spiritual world that is everywhere present.

In The Song of Los, Los sings of the decayed state of man, where the arbitrary laws of Urizen have become institutionalized:

Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave
Laws & Religions to the sons of Har, binding them more
And more to Earth, closing and restraining,
Till a Philosophy of five Senses was complete.
Urizen wept & gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke.

The "philosophy of the five senses" espoused by scientists and philosophers argues that the world and the mind are like industrial machines operating by fixed laws but devoid of imagination, creativity, or any spiritual life. Blake condemns this materialistic view of the world espoused in the writings of Newton and Locke.

Although man is in a fallen state, the end of the poem points to the regeneration that is to come:

Orc, raging in European darkness,
Arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps,
Like a serpent of fiery flame!

The coming of Orc is likened not only to the fires of revolution sweeping Europe, but also to the final apocalypse when the "Grave shrieks with delight."

The separation of man is also examined in The Book of Ahania, which Blake later incorporated in Vala, or The Four Zoas. In The Book of Ahania Urizen is further divided into male and female forms. Urizen is repulsed by his feminine shadow that is called Ahania:

"Ahania" is only a "sin" in that she is given that name. Urizen, the lawgiver, can not accept the liberating aspects of sexual pleasure. At the end of the poem, Ahania laments the lost pleasures of eternity:

The physical pleasures of sexual union are celebrated as an entrance to a spiritual state. The physical union of man and woman is sign of the spiritual union that is to come.

The Four Zoas is subtitled "The Torments of Love and Jealousy in the Death and Judgement of Albion the Ancient Man," and the poem develops Blake's myth of Albion, who represents both the country of England and the unification of all men. Albion is composed of "Four Mighty Ones": Tharmas, Urthona, Urizen, and Luvah. Originally, in Eden, these four exist in the unity of "The Universal Brotherhood." At this early time all parts of man lived in perfect harmony, but now they are fallen into warring camps. The poem traces the changes in Albion:

His fall into Division & his Resurrection to Unity:
His fall into the Generation of decay & death, & his
Regeneration by the Resurrection from the dead.

The poem begins with Tharmas and examines the fall of each aspect of man's identity. The poem progresses from disunity toward unity as each Zoa moves toward final unification.

In the apocalyptic "Night the Ninth," the evils of oppression are overturned in the turmoil of the Last Judgment: "The thrones of Kings are shaken, they have lost their robes & crowns/ The poor smite their oppressors, they awake up to the harvest."

As dead men are rejuvenated, Christ, the "Lamb of God," is brought back to life and sheds the evils of institutionalized religions:

Thus shall the male & female live the life of Eternity,
Because the Lamb of God Creates himself a bride & wife
That we his Children evermore may live in Jerusalem
Which now descendeth out of heaven, a City, yet a Woman
Mother of myriads redeem'd & born in her spiritual palaces,
By a New Spiritual birth Regenerated from Death.

Very little of Blake's poetry of the 1790s was known to the general public. His reputation as an artist was mixed. Response to his art ranged from praise to derision, but he did gain some fame as an engraver. His commissions did not produce much in the way of income, but Blake never seems to have been discouraged. In 1799 Blake wrote to George Cumberland, "I laugh at Fortune & Go on & on."

Because of his monetary woes, Blake often had to depend on the benevolence of patrons of the arts. This sometimes led to heated exchanges between the independent artist and the wealthy patron. Dr. John Trusler was one such patron whom Blake failed to please. Dr. Trusler was a clergyman, a student of medicine, a bookseller, and the author of such works as Hogarth Moralized (1768), The Way to be Rich and Respectable (1750?), and A Sure Way to Lengthen Life with Vigor (circa 1819). Blake found himself unable to follow the clergyman's wishes: "I attempted every morning for a fortnight together to follow your Dictate, but when I found my attempts were in vain, resolv'd to shew an independence which I know will please an Author better than slavishly following the track of another, however admirable that track may be. At any rate, my Excuse must be: I could not do otherwise; it was out of my power!" Dr. Trusler was not convinced and replied that he found Blake's "Fancy" to be located in the "World of Spirits" and not in this world. Dr. Trusler was not the only patron that tried to make Blake conform to popular tastes; for example, Blake's stormy relation to his erstwhile friend and patron William Hayley directly affected the writing of the epics Milton and Jerusalem.

Blake left Felpham in 1803 and returned to London. In April of that year he wrote to Butts that he was overjoyed to return to the city: "That I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoy'd, & that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See Visions, Dream Dreams & Prophecy & Speak Parables unobserv'd & at liberty from the Doubts of other Mortals." In the same letter Blake refers to his epic poem Milton, composed while at Felpham: "But none can know the Spiritual Acts of my three years 'Slumber on the banks of the Ocean, unless he has seen them in the Spirit, or unless he should read My long Poem descriptive of those Acts."

In his "slumber on the banks of the Ocean," Blake, surrounded by financial worries and hounded by a patron who could not appreciate his art, reflected on the value of visionary poetry. Milton, which Blake started to engrave in 1804 (probably finishing in 1808), is a poem that constantly draws attention to itself as a work of literature. Its ostensible subject is the poet John Milton, but the author, William Blake, also creates a character for himself in his own poem. Blake examines the entire range of mental activity involved in the art of poetry from the initial inspiration of the poet to the reception of his vision by the reader of the poem. Milton examines as part of its subject the very nature of poetry: what it means to be a poet, what a poem is, and what it means to be a reader of poetry.

In the preface to the poem, Blake issues a battle cry to his readers to reject what is merely fashionable in art:

Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable Fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of men whose whole delight is in Destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever in Jesus our Lord.

In attacking the "ignorant Hirelings" in the "Camp, the Court & the University," Blake repeats a familiar dissenting cry against established figures in English society. Blake's insistence on being "just & true to our own Imaginations" places a special burden on the reader of his poem. For as he makes clear, Blake demands the exercise of the creative imagination from his own readers.

In the well-known lyric that follows, Blake asks for a continuation of Christ's vision in modern-day England:

The poet-prophet must lead the reader away from man's fallen state and toward a revitalized state where man can perceive eternity.

"Book the First" contains a poem-within-a-poem, a "Bard's Prophetic Song." The Bard's Song describes man's fall from a state of vision. We see man's fall in the ruined form of Albion as a representative of all men and in the fall of Palamabron from his proper position as prophet to a nation. Interwoven into this narrative are the Bard's addresses to the reader, challenges to the reader's senses, descriptions of contemporary events and locations in England, and references to the life of William Blake. Blake is at pains to show us that his mythology is not something far removed from us but is part of our day to day life. Blake describes the reader's own fall from vision and the possibility of regaining those faculties necessary for vision.

The climax of the Bard's Song is the Bard's sudden vision of the "Holy Lamb of God": "Glory! Glory! to the Holy lamb of God: / I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord." At the end of the Bard's Song, his spirit is incorporated into that of the poet Milton. Blake portrays Milton as a great but flawed poet who must unify the separated elements of his own identity before he can reclaim his powers of vision and become a true poet, casting off "all that is not inspiration."

As Milton is presented as a man in the process of becoming a poet, Blake presents himself as a character in the poem undergoing the transformation necessary to become a poet. Only Milton believes in the vision of the Bard's Song, and the Bard takes "refuge in Milton's bosom." As Blake realizes the insignificance of this "Vegetable World," Los merges with Blake, and he arises in "fury and strength." This ongoing belief in the hidden powers of the mind heals divisions and increases powers of perception. The Bard, Milton, Los, and Blake begin to merge into a powerful bardic union. Yet it is but one stage in a greater drive toward the unification of all men in a "Universal Brotherhood."

In the second book of Milton Blake initiates the reader into the order of poets and prophets. Blake continues the process begun in book one of taking the reader through different stages in the growth of a poet.

Turning the outside world upside down is a preliminary stage in an extensive examination of man's internal world. A searching inquiry into the self is a necessary stage in the development of the poet. Milton is told he must first look within: "Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore, / What is Eternal & what Changeable, & what Annihilable." Central to the process of judging the self is a confrontation with that destructive part of man's identity Blake calls the Selfhood, which blocks "the human center of creativity." Only by annihilating the Selfhood, Blake believes, can one hope to participate in the visionary experience of the poem.

The Selfhood places two powerful forces to block our path: the socially accepted values of "love" and "reason." In its purest state love is given freely with no restrictions and no thought of return. In its fallen state love is reduced to a form of trade: "Thy love depends on him thou lovest, & on his dear loves / Depend thy pleasures, which thou hast cut off by jealousy." "Female love" is given only in exchange for love received. It is bartering in human emotions and is not love at all. When Milton denounces his own Selfhood, he gives up "Female love" and loves freely and openly.

As Blake attacks accepted notions of love, he also forces the reader to question the value society places on reason. In his struggle with Urizen, who represents man's limited power of reason, Milton seeks to cast off the deadening effect of the reasoning power and free the mind for the power of the imagination.

Destroying the Selfhood allows Milton to unite with others. He descends upon Blake's path and continues the process of uniting with Blake that had begun in book one. This union is also a reflection of Blake's encounter with Los that is described in book one and illustrated in book two.

The apex of Blake's vision is the brief image of the Throne of God. In Revelation, John's vision of the Throne of God is a prelude to the apocalypse itself. Similarly Blake's vision of the throne is also a prelude to the coming apocalypse. Blake's vision is abruptly cut off as the Four Zoas sound the Four Trumpets, signaling the call to judgment of the peoples of the earth. The trumpets bring to a halt Blake's vision, as he falls to the ground and returns to his mortal state. The apocalypse is still to come.

The author falls before the vision of the Throne of God and the awful sound of the coming apocalypse. However, the author's vision does not fall with him to the ground. In the very next line after Blake describes his faint, we see his vision soar: "Immediately the lark mounted with a loud trill from Felpham's Vale." We have seen the lark as the messenger of Los and the carrier of inspiration. Its sudden flight here demonstrates that the vision of the poem continues. It is up to the reader to follow the flight of the lark to the Gate of Los and continue the vision of Milton.

Before Blake could leave Felpham and return to London, an incident occurred that was very disturbing to him and possibly even dangerous. Without Blake's knowledge, his gardener had invited a soldier by the name of John Scofield into his garden to help with the work. Blake seeing the soldier and thinking he had no business being there promptly tossed him out.

What made this incident so serious was that the soldier swore before a magistrate that Blake had said "Damn the King" and had uttered seditious words. Blake denied the charge, but he was forced to post bail and appear in court. Blake left Felpham at the end of September 1803 and settled in a new residence on South Molton Street in London. His trial was set for the following January at Chichester. The soldier's testimony was shown to be false, and the jury acquitted Blake.

Blake's radical political views made him fear persecution, and he wondered if Scofield had been a government agent sent to entrap him. In any event Blake forever damned the soldier by attacking him in the epic poem Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is in many ways Blake's major achievement. It is an epic poem consisting of 100 illuminated plates. Blake dated the title page 1804, but he seems to have worked on the poem for a considerable length of time after that date. In Jerusalem he develops his mythology to explore man's fall and redemption. As the narrative begins, man is apart from God and split into separate identities. As the poem progresses man's split identities are unified, and man is reunited with the divinity that is within him.

It is sometimes easy to get lost in the complex mythology of Blake's poetry and forget that he is describing not outside events but a "Mental Fight" that takes place in the mind. Much of Jerusalem is devoted to the idea of awakening the human senses, so that the reader can perceive the spiritual world that is everywhere present.

At the beginning of the poem, Jesus addresses the fallen Albion: "'I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; 'Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me.'" In his fallen state Albion rejects this close union with God and dismisses Jesus as the "Phantom of the overheated brain!" Driven by jealousy Albion hides his emanation, Jerusalem. Separation from God leads to further separation into countless male and female forms creating endless division and dispute.

Blake describes the fallen state of man by describing the present day. Interwoven into the mythology are references to present-day London. In chapter two the "disease of Albion" leads to further separation and decay. As the human body is a limited form of its divine origin, the cities of England are limited representations of the Universal Brotherhood of Man. Fortunately for man, there is "a limit of contraction," and the fall must come to an end.

Caught by the errors of sin and vengeance, Albion gives up hope and dies. The flawed religions of moral law cannot save him: "The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowed perceptions, / Are become weak Visions of Time & Space, fix'd into furrows of death." Our limited senses make us think of our lives as bounded by time and space apart from eternity. In such a framework physical death marks the end of existence. But there is also a limit to death, and Albion's body is preserved by the Savior.

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Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in...

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Common assessment 1

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Radio Programme on Blake via HNCtv. you can use your college login details to access this. Click 'view original'.

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More great contextual material on William Blake. WATCH THIS TOO!

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Carol Ann Duffy reading Mrs Midas

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The World's Wife: Mrs Midas - Carol Ann Duffy @ SWF 2013

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Please read this article on Carol Ann Duffy's poetry in preparation for your poetry coursework.

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Slavery in the late 18th Century

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In the second part of his four-part series, historian David Olusoga explores the business of slavery and remembers the black sailors who fought for Britain at Trafalgar.

He also celebrates a Georgian boxing superstar and the men and women who crossed continents in pursuit of freedom.

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BBC Two - Black and British: A Forgotten History, Freedom

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In the second part of his four-part series, historian David Olusoga explores the business of slavery and remembers the black sailors who fought for Britain at Trafalgar. He also celebrates a Georgian boxing superstar and the men and women who crossed continents in pursuit of freedom.

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An interview with Carol Ann Duffy where she talks about The World's Wife poetry collection.