The Blake Society at St James’s Piccadilly
Programme
2001

February 2001
Peter Otto
[Data awaiting incoporation]
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Wednesday 21st March 2001
Peter Cochran
Blake, Byron, & the Blushing Archangels
Dr. Peter Cochran is editor of the Newstead Byron Society Review.  His paper (to be given at a joint meeting of the Blake & Byron societies) will compare the themes of Heaven, Hell, God, Warfare, London, & Judgement in the works of the two great opposites, William Blake & Lord Byron.  Poems to be investigated include The Vision of Judgement, Cain, Jerusalem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of Innocence and of Experience & Don Juan. The evening will conclude with an illustrated analysis of Blake’s drama The Ghost of Abel, dedicated to Byron, & the only one of Blake’s works in which he refers to any contemporary poet. 
This is the second time the two societies have held a joint meeting.  This time it takes place at the St. Ermin’s Hotel, Caxton Street, at 7.00 p.m. (pay bar from 6.30 p.m.). Peter Cochran’s talk will be followed by questions & discussion till 8.15 p.m. when a Buffet Supper will be available.  Tickets for the Lecture/Buffet are £20 each, the Lecture only £5, & are available in advance from The Byron Society, 6 Gertrude Street, London SW10 0JN (020 7352 5112).
(St. Ermin’s Hotel, Caxton Street, SW1; 7.00pm.)
Nearest tube: St. James’s Park.

Tuesday 17th April 2001
David Bindman
Reclaiming Blake as a Painter
David Bindman is Durning-Lawrence Professor of the History of Art in the University of London & teaches courses mainly on British 18th century & European Romantic art, specialising in caricature & the history of printmaking, & questions of national & racial identity.  He was educated at Oxford, Harvard & London universities & has taught frequently in the US.  He has written several books & articles on William Hogarth & William Blake & on the British response to the French revolution (‘Shadow of the Guillotine’, 1989), & on the sculptors Roubiliac & Flaxman.  He is currently working on a book provisionally entitled ‘Ape to Apollo: aesthetics, human variety and race in the 18th century’ for Reaktion Books, & on a major loan exhibition for Tate Britain on British identity in the 18th century.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 22nd May 2001
Anne Mellor
William Blake, Joanna Southcott & the Gendering of Apocalyptic Thinking
Anne K. Mellor is Distinguished Professor of English & Women’s Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles. She is the author of many books & scholarly articles on British Romanticism, including ‘Blake’s Human Form Divine’ (1974), ‘English Romantic Irony’ (1980), ‘Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters’ (1988), ‘Romanticism and Gender’ (1993), & ‘Mothers Of The Nation: Women’s Political Writing In England, 1780-1830’ (2000). She has received numerous scholarly honours, including two Guggenheim Fellowships & the Keats-Shelley Association’s Distinguished Scholar Award.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 19th June 2001
Rosamund Paice
“Art Degraded Imagination Denied War Governed the Nations”: William Blake’s Laocoön Engraving
Rosamund Paice writes: “I am currently completing my doctoral research at the University of Manchester, for which my subject is Blake’s enigmatic “Laocoön” engraving, its sources, & contexts within Blake’s oeuvre, & the literature & art of the time. I also teach on the Romantic Literature & Victorian Literature courses within the University. My paper: “Blake and a ‘curious hypothesis’,” appeared in Notes & Queries 245:3 (September 2000). I have also given several conference & seminar papers, both on Blake’s works, & on Napoleonic & anti-Napoleonic fictions.”
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.) 

Tuesday 3rd July 2001
Morton D. Paley
Blake’s Dark Pastoral: the Illustrations to Thornton’s Virgil
Morton D. Paley is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.  He has been twice a Guggenheim Fellow, a Senior Fulbright Lecturer, & a Research Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  He is the author of a number of books on the literature & art of the Romantic period, including The Continuing City: William Blake’s Jerusalem, The Apocalyptic Sublime, Coleridge’s Later Poetry, Portraits of Coleridge, & Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry.  He edited Jerusalem for the William Blake Trust, & he is co-editor of Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly. He is currently at work on a study of the works of Blake’s last years.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.) 

Sunday 12th August 2001
Bunhill Fields
‘His eyes Brighten’d and He burst out in Singing of the things he saw in Heaven’
As ever we met at Bunhill Fields on the anniversary of William Blake’s death.  We meet by Blake’s grave, at 12 noon, probably then repairing to a nearby public house.
Bunhill Fields Cemetery has entrances in City Road & Bunhill Row, London EC1.  Nearest tube: Old Street exit 5; buses 43, 141, 214, 271 all stop outside the cemetery in City Road.

Wednesday 26th September 2001
Sibylle Erle
Blake & Lavater
Lavater’s ‘Aphorisms on Man’ was one of Blake’s favourite books; one which he annotated extensively & kept by him all his life.  His biographer Alexander Gilchrist, who refers to Blake’s annotations to Lavater as “gold-dust” for the insight they provide into Blake’s beliefs & character, first considered their potential significance.  Blake’s friend Henry Fuseli, the Swiss-born painter, was a long-standing friend of Lavater who had promoted the publication of Lavater’s ‘Aphorisms’ to prepare (according to the critic Marcia Allentuck) British readers for Lavater’s ‘larger work on physiognomy.’  Blake’s annotations may be considered to be part of a wider context of popular opinion & critical reception. This paper will be an attempt to concentrate on Blake, the reader of Lavater.  In the course of this argument, Fuseli’s alleged part in the introduction of Lavater to his ‘new’ audience as well as Fuseli’s role as mediator to Blake will appear in a different light.
Sibylle Erle is a Ph.D. student from Philipps-Universität, Marburg, Germany.  She is currently based at St. Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 27th November 2001
Georgia Dimitrakopoulou
“Does thy God O priest take such vengeance as this?”
Tonight’s speaker will explore the concepts of Error (Sin), attribution of justice, & the doctrine of forgiveness of sins in Blake’s theology, focussing particularly on two images from Blake’s response to Dante: “Ugolino and his sons in prison”, & “Paolo and Francesca”.  Georgia Dimitrakopoulou provides the following biographical note: “I first came to England in 1991 as an Erasmus student doing my fourth year BA at the University of Essex.  The following year I returned to Essex for the MA course in Modernism and Postmodernism, where I wrote a dissertation on Theodor Adorno’s Modern Aesthetics.  I am now based at Leicester University completing a PhD thesis on Blake’s aesthetic vision with the title ‘Exuberance is Beauty’: a Study of Blake’s Visionary Aesthetics.”
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 11th December 2001
Bob Catterall “Jerusalem”: A Tract for Our Times Jerusalem is, of course, much more than a tract but Bob Catterall, as an urbanist concerned with urban & social regeneration, argues that Blake does speak to these concerns. Bob Catterall devised & co-organised the Tate Gallery event of 1991 on “William Blake & the Regeneration of London” & has since given particular consideration to Barcelona, Milan, Newcastle, Paris & San Francisco. He is Visiting Senior Fellow at Newcastle University, is editor of the journal “CITY” & lives part-time in San Francisco where he is working on a book on the emerging geo-cultural order.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)