‘Prepare to be confused, dazzled and amazed: it’s a poetic fever dream of a book … It’s not just a book about Blake: it’s a Blakean book’ Ian Sansom, Telegraph

‘Each of Hoare’s subjects is affected with a certain wildness, a loosening of societal norms that makes for expressive beauty and eccentricity, giving the author a host of colourful and hyper-connected anecdotes. In doing so, they make him a part of the very tradition he is recording, his own work here reaching ecstatic heights, his prose filled with moments of sudden clarity, his life and passions glimpsed’ Philip Marsden, Spectator

‘This wild, dreaming leviathan of a book is undoubtedly Hoare’s masterpiece … It is a mesmerising tapestry, intricate, strange and very queer, that ranges through time and space’ Olivia Laing, author of The Garden Against Time

‘Wild, free, exhilaratingly beautiful, and so alive to the past that everyone and everything seems to be happening right now on the page. I cannot think of a more original writer at work today … To look at English art through his eyes is to see more than you ever could before’ Laura Cumming, author of Thunderclap

‘An impassioned magnum opus celebrating Blake’s star-shaken genius by discovering his lineage everywhere in the author’s own crystal cabinet of artists and outlaws. A tremendous literary performance’ Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London

‘William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love is obviously, and winningly, animated by the overpowering excitement that the author feels when he encounters the works of William Blake … Hoare’s passion for Blake is a marvellous thing, as is his admiration for Nash’ Literary Review

‘An exuberant romp … [Hoare] examines a Blakean universe replete with fairies and spirits, butterflies and stars, sacred monsters and hermaphrodites. Sometimes maddeningly digressive, Hoare’s history is, nonetheless, endearingly intimate. Abundantly illustrated. An imaginative response to an enigmatic artist’ Kirkus Review