Witness Against the Beast - by E P Thompson (Paperback)

About the Book

E.P. Thompson's long-awaited book on William Blake--completed shortly before his death last year. Brilliantly reexamining Blake's cultural milieu and intellectual background, Thompson brings a startling new richness and clarity to Blake's poetic language and imagery. "Engaging and useful . . . fascinatingly displays a splendid historian at work".--The Nation.

Book Synopsis

Witness Against the Beast is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study in which the renowned social historian E.P. Thompson contends that most of the assumptions scholars have made about William Blake are misleading and unfounded. Brilliantly reexamining Blake's cultural milieu and intellectual background, Thompson detects in Blake's poetry a repeated call to resist the usury and commercialism of the "Antichrist" embodied by contemporary society-to "witness against the beast."

About the Author

E.P. Thompson (1924-1993) was one of England's foremost historians and social critics. His books include Customs in Common, Witness Against the Beast, Making History, The Romantics, and The Essential E.P. Thompson (all published by The New Press), as well as The Making of the English Working Class.