William Blake & The Sea Monsters of Love

'A great artist of whom almost nobody had heard'




A new strange and alluring book on the reverberating influence of William Blake, from the award-winning author of Leviathan and Albert and the Whale



Weaving together fragments of artists’ stories across time and place, Philip Hoare embarks on a Sebaldian exploration of the enduring legacy of William Blake. A poet, painter and printmaker who was unappreciated and considered mad in his own time, Blake was eventually lauded as a key pillar of the Romantic movement. His posthumous influence reverberates endlessly, from the films of Derek Jarman to our ongoing fear of technological advancement.


With Blake occupying the narrative centre as a visionary and mythical inspiration, we discover the interconnectedness of artists and writers who came after him, including Paul Nash, Oscar Wilde, Francis Bacon, David Bowie and many more. Snaking around the intersections of history, memoir and art, Hoare looks to the sea while drawing a line from one figure to another, tracing their relationships to the natural world while always returning to the haunting genius of William Blake.