Book description
Bronowski was fascinated by William Blake for much of his life. His
first book about him, A Man Without a Mask, was published in 1944. In
1958 his famous Penguin selection of Blake's poems and letters was
published. As further testimony to Bronowski's enthusiasm it should be
noted that the final plate in the book of his great TV series The
Ascent of Man is Blake's frontispiece to Songs of Experience. William
Blake and the Age of Revolution, first published in 1965, is, in some
ways, a revised edition of A Man Without a Mask, in others, a new
book. In it Bronowski gives a stimulating interpretation of Blake's
art and poetry in the context of the revolutionary period in which he
was working. Like all of Bronowski's writings it dazzles with
wide-ranging erudition, making this work far removed from conventional
literary criticism.
Jacob Bronowski was born in Poland in 1908. At the age of 12 he came
to England, and within six years was a brilliant mathematics student at
Cambridge. During the war he helped to forecast the economic effects of
bombing Germany. After many years working for the National Coal Board,
he moved to the Salk Institute in 1964 while developing his career as a
broadcaster. In 1973, he presented for the BBC the ambitious 13-part
series The Ascent of Man, which made him a household name. He died the
following year.
