increasingly complex with Tiriel (written in 1789 and published in 1874), where the poet first introduces his blind and fiercely repressive father figure that reappears frequently in his later works. In the early 1790s, Blake produced his single important prose work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and a number of revolutionary pieces including America: A Prophecy (1793) and Visions of the Daughters of Albion in the same year. A man touched by, if not madness as is frequently assumed, then at least a visionary instinct, Blake wrote with alleged aid of the spirit world and combined this mystical ecstasy with his radical political fervour. He said to a friend, "I write when commanded by the spirits, and the moment I have written I see the words fly about the room in all directions. It is then published and the spirits can read. My manuscripts are of no further use. I have been tempted to burn my manuscripts, but my wife won't let me".
             Blake continued to write in Lambeth after 1790 without much acclaim, producing after Songs of Experience (with its well-known verse "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright") various works including The Book of Urizen (1794), The Song of Los (1795) and The Four Zoas (also known as Vala, written and revised 1797-1804). Most important though was his poem in two books called Milton that was written and etched between 1804 and 1808. It is sometimes near impenetrable but contains the extremely famous lines known as 'Jerusalem' beginning, "And did those feet in ancient time". The poem revolves around Blake's continued obsession and fascination with Milton's Paradise Lost. One story tells of Blake and his wife reading passages from Milton's poem naked and aloud in their garden unfazed by the arrival of a friend.
             The later years of the great poet and engraver were darkened by his lack of success and by various poor deals such as that for drawings to accompany Robert Blair's The Grave that Robert Cromek refused to pay him...