Blake

Description

"MARVELOUS . . . A first-rate biography of an extraordinary man."

--The Wall Street Journal

"SUPERB . . . Ackroyd writes with clarity and ease: His book is consistently intelligent, entertaining and affectionate. One closes its pages full of admiration for Blake and eager to study his pictures and read his poetry. . . . Ackroyd emphasizes Blake the visionary Londoner, like Turner or Dickens, and convincingly relates the poet's work to the social upheavals of his time. . . . Above all, [he] makes Blake live for the modern reader."
--The Washington Post Book World

"LYRICAL AND ILLUMINATING . . . Ackroyd is a masterly storyteller and interpreter of Blake's writing and art."
--Chicago Tribune

"THE WORK OF A WRITER AT THE PEAK OF HIS LITERARY POWERS . . . It is one of the great strengths of Ackroyd's writing that he reminds us that every individual life and cast of mind has a tradition behind it, a context of other lives and minds which is half forgotten or not remembered at all. As a writer, he is always letting his bucket deeper and deeper down the historical well."
--The New Yorker

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William Blake, a London hosier's son, began having mystical visions at the age of eight and came to see his life as a revelation of eternity. While eking out a living as an engraver, he offered, quite unsuccessfully, his great series of prophetic books, Songs of Innocence and Experience. For Ackroyd, biographer of both Charles Dickens and T. S. Eliot, Blake was a visionary, who long before Freud saw warfare as a form of repressed sexuality and believed there were eternal states of rage, desire and selfhood through which a man passes, keeping his soul intact. The tragedy was that he had the capacity to become a great public and religious poet, but instead turned in upon himself, gaining neither reputation nor influence in his lifetime.

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Customer Reviews

Run-Of-The-Mill
With all the fantastic titles of Blake books out there ("Witness Against the Beast"; "Prophet Against Empire") all Ackroyd could come up with was, uh, "Blake"? From the book's bland title to its dry rehashing of many misconceptions and stereotypes about Blake and his work, Ackroyd's is just another voice tossed into the gathering wilderness of Blake scholarship. There is nothing distinctive or even revelatory about this book, and it seemed to me throughout my reading that it was written more out of obligation than passion. Ackroyd seems more interested in toning down the embellishments of a 150-year-old biography (Gilchrist's) than telling a good story, when it has long been understood that Gilchrist was writing with the fervor and love any writer might have when penning the very first biography of a figure whose legend was already blossoming into something gargantuine.

But more frustrating than Ackyrod's dispassion is the eagerness with which he embraces enduring but disastrous presumptions about Blake. Chief among these is the astounding claim (made by so many others besides Ackroyd) that Blake somehow decided to "turn inward" and thus deny fame: "he had the capacity to become a great public and religious poet but, instead, he turned in upon himself and gained neither influence nor reputation." But Blake WAS the "great religious poet" of his day, and Ackroyd himself concedes this early on: "it can truly be said that he is the last great religous poet in England." Well, which is it, Peter? Any suggestion that Blake somehow missed out on his claim to this distinction says less about Blake than it does about our own epoch, in which we find it increasingly hard to measure success with any yardsticks other than those of the dollars, cents and celebrity.

It is no secret that many of history's most brilliant artists died in squalor because of their practical ineptitude. I don't think Blake cared much for mortgage rates or 401Ks when he was around, and thank god he had the courage not to. Ackroyd repeatedly demonstrates his understanding that Blake was a wholly impractical man and completely unskilled at the cruder concerns of survival, yet he still somehow finds a way to hold Blake responsible for his failures as an entrepreneur. "He never could have been a tradesman," Ackroyd writes, "he was 'totally destitute of the dexterity of a London shopman' and was 'sent away from the counter (of his father's shop) as a booby'." A "booby." Sure doesn't sound like the description of a PR genius to me.

But Ackroyd goes even further in what amounts to a clear understanding that in order to become this "public poet" or "great engraver" Blake would have had to either ignore or compromise his artistic integrity. Sound like a familiar paradox? What Blake did for money and what Blake did for himself were two entirely different worlds in his life, and it is the latter that brought us "Jerusalem," "The Four Zoas," "Milton" and so many stirring and vibrantly colored plates. "He could have continued as one of the best copy-engravers of his day," Ackroyd carries on, "But ... he wished to experiment with his own technique." God forbid. Yes, he could have been marketable, but he was a visionary far more intrigued by his private muse than public fortune and the sacrifices it entailed. As Blake himself writes: "I must create a System, or be enslav'd by another mans/I will not reason and Compare: my business is to create."

Throughout this book the conenction is made -- though apparently without Ackyroyd's comprehension -- between convention and success, withdrawal and genius. This does not have to be the fate of every innovator, but with Blake there just doesn't seem to have been any other way. Why Ackroyd choses not to see this when he himself weaves together all the evidence is truly baffling. Observations such as "in want of income or renown, he had decided to return to more orthodox styles" both make and miss the point. This was Blake's life-long misfortune and that of so many artists who, for the sake of survival, often have to make art of massive appeal, not of private vision or originality. Worse, the banality of the work Blake was sometimes hired to illustrate condemned him to contribute material of corresponding weakness. What an acute agony it must have been for this man to be employed by writers whose skill he knew fell far short of his own, and yet to have to sanction their own work with his time and sweat! I'll take poverty over such indignity any day of the week.

Predictably, Blake himself puts it best: "To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way." Amen, Mr. Blake.

To be fair, Ackroyd does show great sympathy for the complexity of Blake's character, and especially for the plight described above. Specifically, Ackroyd's investigation into the various personalities Blake manifested over the years, Blake's deep and heartbreaking identity with Job, and Ackroyd's explication of Blake's "London" are long-lasting contributions to Blake scholarship and show that Ackroyd is capable of far more inspiration than he otherwise exhibits throughout the book. For more informed and illuminating discussions of Blake's life and work, David Erdman's "Prophet Against Empire," Harold Bloom's "Blake's Apocalypse" and, to a lesser extent, E.P. Thompson's "Witness Against the Beast" are so good as to render Ackroyd's book obsolete.

2004-07-18 (Tampa, FL USA) | Helpful Votes: 14 | Rating: 3

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too fawning
I have really enjoyed Ackroyd's writing in the past. His London Biography, in particular, is an outstanding book.
I had, therefore, high hopes for his life of Blake, the 18th century visionary being a famous Londoner and a fascinating man.

I was a little disappointed. It's certainly learned and well researched (though it eggregiously overuses the word "vouchsafe"), but seems to skip over a number of important points: for one thing, Ackroyd hints darkly the Blake may have had misogynistic tendencies, but then declares "this isn't the place for a discussion of such things". Well, if a balanced biography isn't, I don't know what is.

Additionally, Ackroyd is somewhat credulous in his desire to portray Blake as a misunderstood genius, rather than a somewhat troubled individual. Serious credence is given to statements that certain people in Blake's circle (including, to an extent, Blake himself) were clairvoyant, whilst on the other hand short shrift is given to far more credible notions: such as that Blake - a man given to regular visions of angels and saints, after all - might have been mentally ill. Blake's behaviour may have been that of a genius, but is equally explainable as that of a flat-out nutcase, which appears to have been the general consensus of the time (and might partly explain Blake's lack of success during his own life).

2003-11-01 | Olly Buxton (Highgate, UK) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 3

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A Good, But Not a Great Biography of William Blake
Peter Ackroyd's 1995 "Blake: A Biography," is a good, but not a great biography of the late 18th-early 19th century poet, prophet, painter, and genius, William Blake. Ackroyd's prose is fluid and easy to follow, but the structuring of the book, while it does mostly follow the pattern of Blake's life, is somewhat inconsistent. There are chapters in which Ackroyd does nothing but profile one poem (do we really need a biographer's interpretation of "The Tyger"?), which detracts from the progress of his narrative. Also, there are points in the course of the book where Ackroyd seems a little too condescending to his subject, which imposes a distance between biographer, subject, and reader - my own preference is for the biographer to bring the reader into the subject's life.

One thing that Ackroyd is good at is allowing Blake and his contemporaries to speak for themselves on a number of topics - revealing a depth of ambivalence towards, for example, Blake's lifelong experience of visions, Blake's business acumen (or lack thereof), his hardheaded independence, and so on. Henry Fuseli, John Flaxman, John Linnell, and of course, William Hayley, to whom Blake owed his three year sojourn at Felpham - all are quoted extensively, revealing the social network in which Blake moved. Ackroyd is at his best when he is examining Blake's movements in life, from engraver's apprentice, to art student, through his life of engraving, and in outlining what he was doing to support himself while he produced his illuminated masterpieces.

Ackroyd falters, though, when he tries to play the intentional fallacy game - attempting to explain Blake's nearly-inexplicable works of poetic and prophetic genius by way of the events of his life. Certainly, Blake is one artist who invites such interpretations, with the fact that he attributed his method of illuminated printing to a conversation with his dead brother, Robert, and the fact that Blake incorporates figures from his own life in his works. However, while Ackroyd acknowledges that biographical interpretations are far too simplistic for Blake's works, he does it anyway. I would have much preferred Ackroyd to stick to the conditions and circumstances in which Blake worked and lived and produced his works, than his half-handed attempts at literary and artistic criticism.

The sheer number of illustrations - three sets of portraits, and samples of Blake's works (commercial and non) - are worthy of praise and show a discernment in selection. However, none are noted or labeled anywhere in the text, which makes for somewhat confusing reading. And there are some works which are mentioned once which are represented in Ackroyd's seleciton of illustrations; while others mentioned several times go completely undepicted.

On the whole though, this is an interesting biography - I found myself reading through a lot of it quite voraciously - but I think this is more a testament to the inherent fascination which William Blake's life provides on its own, than the manner in which Ackroyd presents it. Is the book worth reading? Absolutely. For the Blake novice, it provides an entrancing glimpse which should certainly lead many readers into an enjoyment and appreciation for Blake's work. For the most part, Ackroyd does justice to Blake in presenting him as a working man - like anyone - who struggled and failed to make a name for himself in his own time, but whose genius has outlasted the fame of nearly all of his own artistic contemporaries.

2003-08-27 (Evanston, IL United States) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 3

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Blake, London, and Beauty - What Better Combination?
In 1995 & '96 I was traveling to London regularly on business trips. During one of my site seeing ventures the name of William Blake finally penetrated my consciousness. I became fascinated with the gallery the Tate museum (now Tate Britain) had of his work. I saw this book at the airport and picked it up and it became a London obsession for me. When I would get back to London I would look up streets and sites that I had read about in this WONDERFUL book.

This was the first book of Ackroyd's I read and became a fan immediately. Since he is also a writer of fiction and is a profound scholar of London he offers great insight into Blake and his art. I have since added many other volumes of Blake's works and other books on Blake to my library but I still have deep affection for this book. When someone asks me what book they should read about Blake I always point them to this great book.

You will get to know Blake's life and work, but you will also get to know Blake's relationship to London (where he spent almost all of his life) and to the other artists of his time such as Flaxman, Reynolds, and others. It is even worth re-reading. That is high praise!

2002-05-30 (Ann Arbor, MI) | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 5

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Double vision
This is a great biography. Blake is a complex character. A visionary, an artist whose writing and paintings created a total vision. Ackroyd doesn't belittle the aspirations or eccentricities of Blake, and fleshes out his portrait with interesting details and contextualizes Blake's life within the world events through which he lived.

Of course the reproductions of Blake's work don't do justice to them. Particularly the watercolors in which the luminous white comes from the color of the unpainted paper. These works come off looking clumsy in reproductions. If you have the chance to see these works in person, the effect is altogether different. Blake created a worldview, and he inhabited that (largely interior) mythos.

Find this book. Buy it, and then do anything you can to see Blake's works themselves.

2001-11-01 (Milford, ON Canada) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Newton (Ackroyd's Brief Lives)

Product Details

• Form: NEW
• Notes: Make New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780385507998

Description

When Newton was not yet twenty-five years old, he formulated calculus, hit upon the idea of gravity, and discovered that white light was made up of all the colors of the spectrum. By 1678, Newton designed a telescope to study the movement of the planets and published Principia, a milestone in the history of science, which set forth his famous laws of motion and universal gravitation. Newton’s long-time research on calculus, finally made public in 1704, triggered a heated controversy as European scientists accused him of plagiarizing the work of the German scientist Gottfried Leibniz.

In this third volume in the acclaimed Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series, bestselling author Peter Ackroyd provides an engaging portrait of Isaac Newton, illuminating what we think we know about him and describing his seminal contributions to science and mathematics.

A man of wide and eclectic interests, Newton blurred the borders between natural philosophy and speculation: he was as passionate about astrology as astronomy and dabbled in alchemy, while his religious faith was never undermined by his determination to interpret a modern universe as a mathematical universe.

By brining vividly to life a somewhat puritanical man whose desire to experiment and explore bordered on the obsessive, Peter Ackroyd demonstrates the unique brilliance of Newton’s perceptions, which changed our understanding of the world.

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Customer Reviews

Newton in a nutshell
The audience for this book is really quite large. Adult readers who know little of Newton and young readers interested in a manageable first encounter will find Peter Ackroyd's text perfectly suited to their needs. Let me mention a few items from this book that caught my attention. First, Newton from a young age appeared to be gifted mechanically; not "mechanics" as an abstraction, but the actual business of building and constructing devices. Second, it would have been next to impossible to predict greatness from Newton based on his family line. Third, Newton appears to have suffered a mental breakdown of sorts at one point in his life. Fourth, Newton worked to balance two, somewhat contradictory impulses: he was reclusive and, at the same time, sought public respect. Finally, even an intellect of Newton's stature could not resist becoming mired in petty quarrels, as witnessed by his running confrontations with the Royal Astronomer. Ackroyd's Newton offers a nice return to readers willing to invest a small amount of time.

2008-10-12 (Sugar Land, Texas USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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A Brief, Essential Biography
Eventually humans understood that there were physical laws that governed the universe, and that these laws could be made mathematically precise and could be verified. No one person enabled this understanding more than Isaac Newton, who obsessively tracked down laws of motion, gravity, optics, and pure mathematics. Since his death almost three hundred years ago, there have been many biographies attempting the impossible task of explaining Newton's unparalleled genius. In _Newton_ (Nan A. Talese), Peter Ackroyd has made no such attempt. For one thing, his book is part of his "Brief Lives" series (Chaucer and Turner have gone before), and it is a small volume. For another, Ackroyd has not described many of Newton's scientific achievements in detail; the account of his _Principia Mathematica_ is almost cursory. But the brevity of the volume is actually one of its strengths. We aren't going to understand genius, but we can understand some of the personality, and Ackroyd has done a wonderful job in describing what sort of a person Newton was. Of necessity, the portrait is unpleasant. Newton was among the most unlikeable of geniuses, but it might well be that if he had been less arrogant and selfish, he might have accomplished less.

An uncle saved Newton from being a farmer, enabling him to continue schooling and go to Cambridge. Ironically, he became a professor at Trinity College, while his religious studies led him to abhor the concept of the Trinity. He was certain that the priests and bishops who preached a Trinity were practicing idolatry. He was particularly interested in biblical chronology and prophecy, working out a date for creation half a century later than the famous 2004 BC of Bishop Ussher, and attempting precise calculation of the date of Jesus's return to Earth. He knew from his studies of the Book of Revelation that the Catholic Church was the Antichrist therein. Newton's other secret study, also outlasting his physics and mathematics, was his alchemy. He had a huge library of occult alchemical texts and he spent days and nights in his lab, forgetting to sleep or eat as he fired up experiments that had to go for weeks at a time. Ackroyd is surely right, however, when he explains that in his obsessive digging into alchemical or scriptural matters, Newton was using the same frame of mind that stood him in good stead in the research that made him famous. The enormous idea that there were three laws of motion, for instance, and that they were universal and applied, as he wrote in 1687, "everywhere to immense distances" is still breathtaking. Likewise, the idea that an apple falls and that the Moon goes around the Earth, and both are expressions of one universal force, is so counterintuitive that it compels admiration for the mind that could unite the two. By the way, distrust the legend that an apple bonked him on the head and he had an immediate epiphany of how gravity worked. Newton himself instigated the story, but no one knows if it is true, because he told four separate versions to four separate people. It is clear, however, that whatever inspiration the apple gave him, there was a long period of contemplation and calculation before he established the universality of gravity.

It was in only a few years of his mid-twenties that he explained gravity, demonstrated that white light was a blend of rainbow colors, invented the calculus, and made one of the first reflecting telescopes. The rest of his years he was doing his alchemy and scriptural researches, and more practically, he was Warden of the Royal Mint. He was in all his capacities an almost thoroughly dislikeable man. He was uninterested in art, literature, music, or women, and because of our times it must be specified that his sexual interest in men is mere undocumented speculation. As a founder of science, he knew the value of experimentation and was a genius at it, but he was furious if someone implied that another experiment had shown a contrary result. He was petty, ruthless, and vindictive. His famous catfight with Leibnitz over who invented calculus was childish (matched, it must be said, by childishness on Leibnitz's side), but it was representative of how he got along with anyone who crossed him. He had few friends, and when he presided over meetings of the Royal Society, anyone who attempted a witticism or who laughed was asked to leave the room. He seldom laughed himself; an assistant of years said Newton laughed exactly once, when he was asked what the use was of studying Euclid. Perhaps you just had to be there; Ackroyd writes, "The exact meaning of this laugh is not exactly clear." Newton was an astonishing figure, gigantic in his accomplishments and his follies, and Ackroyd's model biography shows both sides well.

2008-07-11 | Rob Hardy (Columbus, Mississippi USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Newton For Math Dummies
Isaac Newton is someone I've been curious about since grade school when some teacher gave me the impression that he discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head. Even then, that didn't make much sense to me--people must have been aware of gravity since the first caveman dropped a rock on his foot--and I was pleased to learn through Peter Ackroyd's wonderful book that the apple incident probably never happened. What Newton did do through careful observation and applied mathematics was to prove the existence of universal gravity and show the laws which governed it. There is much more that Newton accomplished of course: His work on optics was seminal. His three laws of motion are still quoted in physics' classes. And his great book on the principles of mathematics was a wonder of his age.

All of this, Ackroyd explains in a conversational style that even someone like myself who has trouble adding up a supermarket bill can understand. But Ackroyd does not neglect Newton's human side. He was not, in many ways, a very nice person: A control freak who was always ready to take disagreement personally, he had few real friends and often broke up with those he did have. His life-long passion for alchemy and his belief in the Arian heresy made this already secretive man even more secretive.

Ackroyd's book is short, sweet and not annotated. It is surely not for scholars. But for those who want to pay a brief visit to a scientific genius in the company of a wise and entertaining guide could do far worse than to read this book.

2008-06-27 (Las Vegas, NV USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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A model brief life in context
This is a marvelous book. It both explains Newton's development as a human being and as one of the greatest scientific thinkers and experimenters of his or any era. Carefully and clearly written, it is a total success. I enjoyed it far more than James Gleick's NEWTON, perhaps because Ackroyd is so good at explaining what he knows how to explain and avoiding what he does not know how to explain. As he notes, neither Newton nor anyone else in his era could explain gravity -- but Newton was able to explain the laws governing gravity and thus provide a foundation for later scientists, notably Einstein, to go further and explain gravity. Ackroyd is also wonderfully skilled at explaining links between Newton's occult studies and his scientific studies. All in all, a must read for anyone who wants to understand a pivotal thinker.

2008-05-31 | R. B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School (Brooklyn, New York USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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A Brief but Refined Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton
This is the third in the series of "Brief Lives" written by Peter Ackroyd, the distinguished author of "London: The Biography" and "Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination." It is one of the new compact but thorough book treatments that have recently become popular (it runs a mere 170 small pages, not including index). I have marveled in past Amazon reviews at these concise books how much information a skilled and knowledgeable author can pack into a brief space, and this book is no exception. Ackroyd covers all of Newton's life (1642-1727). It is the perfect book for folks like me that have heard a lot about Newton, but are not inclined to want to read one of the longer biographies now available (e.g., that by James Gleick). The author wisely chooses not to probe too deeply into Sir Isaac's mathematical and scientific accomplishments, which is perfect for the general reader, but he offers enough insight so that the reader is aware generally of what Newton is up to and why he is such a giant in the history of science and enlightenment. His invention of calculus, study of optics, celestial mechanics, gravity and so much more are all concisely covered. One learns all sorts of interesting things about Newton, who certainly was not a conventional academic: his interests in alchemy; astrology; and arcane religious concepts to name just a few. Interestingly, Newton spent the bulk of his career not as an academic but as Warden of the Mint, which allowed him to amass quite an estate. If this be an example of "knowledge in a nutshell," let it be: it accomplishes it purpose superbly.

2008-05-29 (WASHINGTON, DC USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling

Product Details

• Health circumstances: NEW
• Notes: Identify New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780670021222

Description

A fresh, modern prose retelling captures the vigorous and bawdy spirit of Chaucer's classic

Renowned critic, historian, and biographer Peter Ackroyd takes on what is arguably the greatest poem in the English language and presents the work in a prose vernacular that makes it accessible to modern readers while preserving the spirit of the original.

A mirror for medieval society, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales concerns a motley group of pilgrims who meet in a London inn on their way to Canterbury and agree to take part in a storytelling competition. Ranging from comedy to tragedy, pious sermon to ribald farce, heroic adventure to passionate romance, the tales serve not only as a summation of the sensibility of the Middle Ages but as a representation of the drama of the human condition.

Ackroyd's contemporary prose emphasizes the humanity of these characters-as well as explicitly rendering the naughty good humor of the writer whose comedy influenced Fielding and Dickens-yet still masterfully evokes the euphonies and harmonies of Chaucer's verse. This retelling is sure to delight modern readers and bring a new appreciation to those already familiar with the classic tales.

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Customer Reviews

Crude Translation
I'm sorry to rain on the parade of positive reviews here, but this "translation" of the "Canterbury Tales" strays too far from the original to be characterized truly as a translation (Ackroyd himself calls it a "retelling").

Chaucer is a suggestive poet, ambiguous, ironic; he can be crude at times, but he is always cleverly reversing himself and hiding his intentions from the reader. That (and the amazing poetry) is what makes him such a complex and delicious poet to read. Ackroyd's prose, larded with the f-word and other expletives, just doesn't capture the sense or the spirit of the original.

Examples could be multiplied endlessly, so let me pick just two. In the infamous pear-tree scene in Merchant's Tale, a randy squire copulates in a tree with May, the young wife of January, the old blind owner of the manor. January's sight returns at the crucial moment and he witnesses his own cuckolding, which both he and the narrator have some trouble describing, until the gullible old fool lapses into a paroxysm of euphemism ("I thought your smock had lain upon his breast") as he apologizes to his deceitful wife. At one point January does blurt out "He swyved thee!" (which is as close as Middle English comes to the f-word). Ackroyd uses this scene though as a pretext for exploding the f-bomb three times in less than a page, thereby missing most of the comedy that comes from shifting registers and the poet's struggle to be explicit and delicate at the same time. Ackroyd also completely misses the hints in this same scene that May is pretending to be pregnant in order to get January to let her climb into the tree so she can satisfy her food-craving (J longs for an heir). Thus, the reader completely misses the significance of January's stroking her belly at the end, since she may by now be with child by another man.

Let me finish with an example that all Chaucer lovers will recognize -- those famous opening lines (loosely paraphrased): "When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root and bathed the sinews of every plant in the liquid whose force engenders the flower; when the Zephyr wih his sweet breath has inspired the tender crops in every wood and heath...." Nature is the point here; man comes in later. But not in Ackroyd! He translates, "When the soft sweet showers of April reach the roots of all things, refreshing the parched earth, nourishing every sapling and every seedling, then humankind rises up in joy and expectation."

If Chaucer had wanted humankind in these opening lines, he would have put humankind there. He didn't. Instead, he is building up an expectation for a certain kind of poetry, teasing us, testing us. Of course, we expect men to appear in this spring setting, but Chaucer is staving off the moment when nature gives way to man, just as later at the end of this verse paragraph, he reverses direction again and surprises us with, of all things, pilgrimage as the natural outlet for the impulses of spring ("Thanne longen folk to goon on [wait, wait, wait] pilgrimages")! Of course we know that pilgrimages can be excuses for boondoggles, but that's an implication that emerges from the shift in tone in Chaucer and all the more tantalizing for being left unstated. Not so with Ackroyd, who mentions general tourism before he even gets to pilgrimage: "This is the best season of the year for travellers. That is why good folk then long to go on pilgrimage." He thus loses all that delicious play and reversal of expectation. Boo!

This unsubtle version is unworthy of the deft and evasive poet it follows. It may be fun to read (and maybe even a bad Chaucer is better than no Chaucer at all). But don't mistake it for the real thing.

2010-01-26 (Boston, MA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 2

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A workable translation of a classic, and easy to read aloud
I studied "The Canterbury Tales" for several weeks in college many years ago, and from time to time re-read it -- or tales from it -- with the old pleasure and without the pressure of earning a grade that would keep my scholarship alive. The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale has always been a great favorite -- she seems to epitomize some of the powerful farm women I knew as a child.

This new translation comes at a time when I've been regularly reading aloud to my wife, and we have greatly enjoyed this version -- my Middle English accent is incomprehensible, even to me. My well annotated college Modern Library version of the original and the Coghill translation are always close at hand to deepen our understanding; the Ackroyd version is very easy to read aloud and to understand in modern terms.

Which version you prefer will depend on your own interest and objectives in reading this classic of English literature. These short extracts from the Wife of Bath's Prologue give a flavor of each of my favorite versions:

Chaucer:

"Housbondes at chirche-dore she hadde fyve,

Withouten other companye in youthe ...

In felawschip wel coude she laughe and carpe.

Of remedyes of love she knew perchaunce,

For she coude of that art the olde daunce."

Coghill:

"Five husbands have I had at the church door,
Yes it's a fact I've had so many.
All worthy in their way, as good as any. ...
The gift of laughter and fun was mine.
Love's remedies I know, and not by chance;
I know first hand the art of that old dance.

Ackroyd:

"She had been married in church five times but, in her youth, she had enjoyed any number of liaisons. ... She had performed in that game before. She knew, as they say, the ways of the dance."

The "Times" [of London] discusses why reading this great book has relevance today:

"Chaucer may be said to stand at the head, or source, of the great English tradition. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that he considered it extraordinary "that Chaucer should have been so unmistakably English almost before the existence of England". But it is perhaps not so extraordinary of a poet who seems to define or sum up the English genius, with his personal modesty and broadness of feeling, with his respect for tradition and his inventive diversity. Translating The Canterbury Tales into contemporary English is another way of affirming its centrality and its continuing life. It can be reborn in every generation."

All three versions have their charms, and Chaucer still lives for those that love the English language and good literature.

Robert C. Ross 2010

2010-01-03 (New Jersey) | Helpful Votes: 17 | Rating: 5

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A Great Translation
While the Tales don't usually translate well, this is about as good as any could be. Avoiding the painfully flat literalism of most adaptations, Akroyd gives, instead, a real sense of the flavor and tone of the original Middle English.

2009-11-16 (Michigan) | Helpful Votes: 27 | Rating: 5

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A Gem, Just in Time for the Holidays
When I first heard about this, I was a bit skeptical, not to mention feeling a bit of an intellectual snob remembering the hours we spent learning, decoding, memorizing, and translating the original Tales back in school. But I couldn't resist taking a peep under the cover and was immediately seduced. Ackroyd's language perfectly captures the tone of each tale, and the characters leap from the pages as their stories unfold. I expect it is now only a matter of time before it's adapted for the screen; we can only hope HBO or Showtime get a hold of it first and spare us squirming through Keanu Reeves as the Pardoner or Carmen Electra as the Wife of Bath. In any case, give this book a chance, and stuff it in the stocking of anyone who claims to love literature. Just don't expect to see them until they've turned the last page.

2009-11-14 (Homer, AK USA) | Helpful Votes: 51 | Rating: 5

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Venice: Pure City

Description

Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial—a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the ultimate city.

The Venetians’ language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This lat­est work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its readers to that sensual and surprising city.

His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and its trading empire, the wars against Napoleon, and the tourist invasions of today. Everything is here: the merchants on the Rialto and the Jews in the ghetto; the glassblowers of Murano; the carnival masks and the sad colonies of lepers; the artists—Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo. And the ever-present undertone of Venice’s shadowy corners and dead ends, of prisons and punishment, wars and sieges, scandals and seductions.

Ackroyd’s Venice: Pure City is a study of Venice much in the vein of his lauded London: The Biography. Like London, Venice is a fluid, writerly exploration organized around a num­ber of themes. History and context are provided in each chap­ter, but Ackroyd’s portrait of Venice is a particularly novelistic one, both beautiful and rapturous. We could have no better guide—reading Venice: Pure City is, in itself, a glorious journey to the ultimate city.

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Customer Reviews

Shimmering, bejewelled account - and yet....
Yes, this is magisterial, beautifully written - but, typically of Ackroyd, too many questionable sweeping assertions sometimes impede the flow of what should be a rollicking good read. For every "wow!" there is a corresponding "huh?" It can be argued this is what makes Ackroyd unique.

If you know and love Venice, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, it will pique your curiosity. And you might agree with Shakespeare's Holofernes: "Venetia, Venetia, chi non ti vede, non ti pretia!" (Venice - whoever doesn't see you, doesn't esteem you.)

Let's start with the "wow!" Wide-ranging, learned and instructive. As with his London: The Biography, Ackroyd dives headfirst into the water surrounding Venice's 117 islands, fishing for primal origins and finding it an elemental metaphor for the city. Chapter 2, "City of St Mark," deals with the refugees who settled there. Then comes the golden age of state power, commerce and trade. This also embraces the merchants of the Rialto and the Jews in the Ghetto.

By Chapter 6, Ackroyd is back in rhapsodic mode, with "Timeless City," including ruminations on the bells. The next section, "Living City," humanises the city, with fascinating subsections on Body and Buildings; Learning and Language; Colour and Light (fabulous work with the artists including Bellini, Tintoretto and Titan); and Pilgrims and Tourists. Then Ackroyd moves on to carnival and carnal aspects, including the "Eternal Feminine" (virgin and whore). Similarly, Sacred City considers heavenly and hellish aspects - which seem to win out in "Shadows of History" with its Death in Venice theme.

And now for the "huh?" factor. There's a lingering suspicion about some of the connections: is the mirror-like surface of the Lagoon like glass, which, conveniently made in Murano, stands as a metaphor for the City? Does Venetian satin, conveniently called watered silk, like the watery and "undulating" floor of St Mark's, echo the water surrounding the whole city? Are the pinky green stones of the buildings the colours of flesh and bone, thus personifying the entire urban building fabric? And is watery Venice a place of "liminal fantasies of death and rebirth?"

Some will be inspired, others irritated. But there's no denying Ackroyd's learning, creativity, gusto and grace.

2009-09-24 (London) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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Chatterton

Description

The mystery of Chatterton is investigated by two Londoners, a young poet and an elderly female novelist, who find more riddles than answers from their search. At once hilarious, this entertaining comedy is a thoughtful exploration of the deepest issues of both life and art.

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Customer Reviews

Nesting Dolls
There is something Gothic about the novels of Peter Ackroyd. I sometimes feel as if I have stumbled into a dream. Maybe, this feeling arises from his conflation of history. In Ackroyd's Chatterton, all artists are fakes and plagiarists, untrustworthy souls that hold the thread of art together through the ages. But since art lives and is always in the present, the artists and their work exist together, which results in blurring images that induce vertigo in the reader. More precisely, the real lives (but are they real or just fiction) of Chatterton, George Meredith, and Wallis, overlap and co-exist with Charles Wychwood, the protagonist of the novel. This is vividly illustrated when Edward, Charles' son, thinks his father resides in Wallis' painting of Chatterton, which is really a painting of Meredith.

So you see the novel creates a puzzle: the "historical" stories operate within and without, in the past and in the present, and influence the "living characters," who are only characters in a work of fiction after all. Ackroyd notifies us early in the book that the sum of the parts operate like nesting dolls that illustrate Harold Bloom's thesis in his seminal work The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry-art springs from an imitation of the artists of the past and then progresses as a reaction or opposition to the influence.

This is not a new theme in the works of Ackroyd. It is an essential element in his outstanding biography of T. S. Eliot. In fact, there are Eliot tracks everywhere in the novel Chatterton. For instance, there is a scene in the Eliot biography where Eliot and his wife, Vivien, are walking in Wychwood. Wychwood then becomes the name of the protagonist-Charles Wychwood, a poet, who struggles with his small production of poetry. When he does produce a work it resembles Eliot's thin first volume, subsidized by Ezra Pound, another of Ackroyd's subjects.

So the question, at the end of the day, is whether all of these complications, allusions, and metaphors are worth the journey. If you love literature, bravura prose, and an excellent puzzle over a beer (or sherry), I would say yes.

2008-02-12 | Poet and Author of Petroglyphs (Dallas, Texas USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Theme and (Too Many) Variations
I read this book all the way through. In that sense it is a success.
I enjoyed much of it but became exasperated with much of it as time went on.

Fiction writers today seem to think that overworking a theme is art. (Everyone you meet echoes everyone you just met; the same plotline is repeated over and over and over.) A little of this is charming. A lot of it is tedious. Same thing with the characters. Too many of them are over the top. It's life in Alice's rabbit hole. After awhile, I just didn't care.

So, although the book is clever and quaint and perhaps even artistic, I cannot recommend it.

2008-01-27 | No. 1 Eric Ambler fan (San Diego, CA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

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Enthralling!
I won't repeat the plot outlines others have given; I just want to say that Chatterton is entertaining, suspenseful and delightful. Peter Ackroyd skillfully weaves his three stories together, but more important, Ackroyd's characters are well-drawn and memorable. Ackroyd's writing is brilliant.

2007-02-20 (New York) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Mimesis...and all that is linked to it...
What first lured me to this book is my great affliciton towards Keats and the eighteenth century at particular...So I flipped a few pages and noticed rather unusual manner of conversationa between the owner of antique shop and his wife. I had to see what was it all about.

Thomas Chatterton supposedly killed himself by arsen in a dusty attic room, still not being eighteen years old. Artistic life that could soar to great hights was rudely interrupted. But what if? What if Chatterton didn't commit suicide, and he continued to live on? Wouldn't the be the greatest victory of one of the greatest plagiators in history? With these questions we start browsing trough layers of meaning in this book.

Ackroyd is familliar with questions that troubled litteral criticism from its begginnings. Plato was first to attack painters, considering their work just an image of an image, and thus unworthy. But isn't the art itself constant upgrading of images that were before? If someone finished Vergiliuses Aeneas would that one be considered an artist or a mere follower?

Where is the truth in art and where lies the beauty? Leading the lives of his characters trough series of bizzare coincidences Ackroyd neglects development of mere ficiton and focuses himself on finer points. Old lady, renowned author, whose artistic existance begun as she discovered long forgotten volumes of some 19th century author...painting portraying Chatterton that was painted on numerous different paintings under it...apprentice who is continuing work of his long dead master under his name...those are all the variations of the fundamental questions that we think of when we think of art...

If you feel even a bit intrigued by what I have written, read this book, and you will not regret it...

2005-04-06 | Shipwreck (Zagreb, Croatia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Blatherton
This was a book that discussed art, and tried too hard to be a work of art itself. Most of the characters were flat and unlikable. The author takes us into three time periods, one melodramatic (the life of Chatterton), one boring (the life of Wallace), and one surreal (the life of Wychwood).
On the positive, I did learn more about Chatterton, and had more of a feel for what it would have been like to feel the way Romantics felt. But all in all, I couldn't wait for this book to be over.

2005-04-01 (Rhode Island) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 2

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London: The Biography

Product Details

• Notes: Marque New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780385497718
• Teach: NEW

Description

Here are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keen observations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens and visitors, Ackroyd reveals the ingenuity and grit and vitality of London. Through a unique thematic tour of the physical city and its inimitable soul, the city comes alive.

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Customer Reviews

Does justice to the great city
London the Biography is a massive, curiously mystical pean to the great wen. It offers up a huge array of historical and cultural meditations on London themes: its weather, its buildings, its street life, its poor, its food, its noise, and so much more. Ackroyd is a native Londoner and worships the city. He is a living embodiment of Samuel Johnson's dictum that a man who is tired of London is tired of life.

In the spirit of Blake and Dickens (two of Ackroyd's heroes), Ackroyd serves up a great thick mystical soup of humanity. His views are suffused with romanticism, rather than being acutely political. For example is able to write about London's poor in the East End without grinding an axe for social reform. His writing style seems akin to composting: he piles up the research, lets it mulch down and examines the results. In particular he seems to have a sense that each neighbourhood (and even the people who dwell there) displays contemporary characteristics from a long stream of historical evolution. For example Clerkenwell was the locus of the 1381 Peasant's revolt, and has been a hotbed of radical activity ever since. I worked as a publisher in an office in Clerkenwell for 3 years and was fascinated by this.

As Ackroyd writes in the final chapter: 'the ancient city and the modern city literally lie beside each other; one cannot be imagined without the other'.

It is a fantastic historical and cultural tribute to London, albeit not the only way of approaching the city in literary terms (Iain Sinclair and Will Self are two other, very different London writers). Ackroyd packs in so much about the city that each street comes alive.

All in all a great book for anyone interested in the history of London.

2009-11-14 (London, UK) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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I Thought I Knew London Fairly Well...For a Non-Resident Anyway
This is an amazing work. Beautifully written, with chapters focusing more on themes than chronologically organized facts like a standard history book, it is nearly impossible to put this book down. It is so jam-packed with information that I should think that no reader could come away without at least a handful of new gems of trivia or a few new names to research. The author so clearly loves his city that his enthusiasm bursts through the pages. This is not simply London through rose-colored glasses however. There are plenty of tales of crime, squalor, injustice and horror mixed in with the glory and beauty of this magnificent, ancient city, as one would expect from any well-written history of such a dynamic subject. I strongly urge travelers to read this before going there (whether it is a first time trip or a revisit) as it may well change your itinerary. This book is an absolute treasure for anyone with any interest in the subject at all. A splendidly enjoyable, page-turner of a history book. Destined to be a classic.

A note of caution: I strongly urge those of you who have decided to buy it to buy the hardcover version as the paperback is of very poor quality. By the time I'd finished reading it the book had just about fallen apart, and I treat my books very well.

2009-07-10 (Somewhere in the desert, CA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Lugubrious until the final quadrant
And only mildly salutatory thence. But there are wonderful turns of phrase and vivid descriptions scattered throughout. What a frustrating, baffling writer!

2009-02-06 (Germantown, TN USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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London: The Prison and the Theater
I've only had the opportunity to spend a few days in London, so I can't claim to know the city well. But, says Ackroyd - himself seemingly a lifelong Londoner, it's been centuries since anyone can claim to really know the city. His bibliographic essay notes there are at least 21, 778 works on the city, and he doesn't claim to have read them all. Still, he has overturned a fair sized library for this book , added some personal observations, and produced an impressionistic, kaleidoscopic book.

Ackroyd eschews a straightforward chronological history. There are sections on London from its beginnings to 1066, medieval London, the Great Fire, Victorian London, and the city's destruction in the Blitz and its later rebuilding. But most of the book is essay like chapters built around themes covering every aspect of London life from its Underground and buried past to its notorious fogs and smogs, its wildlife and street life, markets illicit and licit, disasters and buildings, festivals and executions. And it's not exactly a celebration of the city. Again and again he returns to the metaphor of London as prison. The exemplar here is Jack Sheppard who escaped from London prisons six times. Yet, he never left the city for more than a few days even though it cost him his life.

London as theater is Ackroyd's other metaphor. It extends far beyond the literal stage to the garb of its inhabitants or the speeches of the soon to be hanged at Newgate. London, emphasizes Ackroyd, is a great commercial maw. All has been subsumed in trade at one time or another from the goods of empire coming in at the Thames docks to the sewer hunters and mudlarks scouring muck for treasures. Men, women, and children all played their roles. Even would-be rebels became a trade in Carnaby Street.

One of the most fascinating things in the book is Ackroyd's frequent quotes from foreign visitors. Yoshio Markino, a Japanese painter, noted that the garish colors of London's buildings became beautiful when seen in a fog. Dostoevsky remarked on Londoners haste to drink themselves insensible. (After reading the book's accounts of London riots and drinking, one is tempted to see some modern London problems as a return to some sort of default state for the city.)

How certain London neighborhoods have long been associated with certain acivities is also well told by Ackroyd. He not only talks about the famous Soho but Clerkenwell as well. The latter has, for centuries, been associated with religious heretics and revolutionaries. (Lenin lived there for a time.) And the same neighborhood has a long tradition of clockmaking. (Perhaps explaining why Hiram Maxim worked on his machine guns there.)

Given Ackroyd's many books on literary figures, quotes from British literary figures are to be expected. (Ackroyd notes that it is exceptional for them not to have a London connection.) Dickens, Defoe, Smollett, Milton, Boswell, Orwell, and Wolfe all had things to say about London in essays, letters, and fiction. The literary minded reader may be tempted to make a game of remembering relevant quotes and writers not in the book.

As well as being associated with literature and the capitol of empire, London's bustle helped develop the theories of Darwin and Engels - though Ackroyd asserts this in passing without much proof. The instrument makers of London were crucial to developing the science of the Enlightenment.

There are three minor quibbles with the book. Some of the anecdotes do get repeated though not many in a book so long. Second and more seriously, Ackroyd exhibits some unquestioned pieties. Seeing the poor as diseased and dirty is not a totally groundless stereotype. Mental illness can underlie all three conditions as well as less pathological mental traits. And Ackroyd, in a section on immigrants to London, makes the lazy analogy that complaints about today's immigrants are the same - and equally groundless - as those of the past. That ignores the numbers and cultures of Britian's current immigrants and the corrosive effects of modern transportation and communication on assimilation. One wonders, now that Islamic terrorism has made its way to Britain and sharia law can be enforced by the state, if he feels the same eight years after the book was published. The third quibble is that sometimes Ackroyd thinks he is describing a unique trait of Londoners when it's really more universal. For instance, in what city aren't children attracted to dangerous and forbidden places?

Still, this is a remarkable book in its variety, and it almost never bores despite its length. Anybody interested in one of the great cities of the Western Mind will want to read it.

2008-10-03 (St. Paul, MN USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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History
Meet the family of characters and events that go to making up the world's most easily recognised name . This book invites you in and sits you down , to eat of the feast of interesting and intriguing characters that are London .

2008-06-26 (Morrinsville New Zealand) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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