How did William Blake achieve classic status? What aspects of his art and personality attracted and repelled critics? How was the story of his afterlife coloured by debates and developments in the British art world? Moving between visual and literary analysis, this new study considers the ways in which different audiences and communities dealt with the issue of describing and evaluating Blake's images and designs. Providing fresh insights into the nature of Victorian and Edwardian art, it ranges widely from the writings of Gilchrist, the Rossetti brothers, Ruskin, Swinburne, Symons, Yeats, Joyce, Chesterton and Fry, through to works by Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, E. J. Ellis and J. T. Nettleship.