Introduction

This chapter focuses on the 1790s, which is usually considered William Blake's 'early' period. This is because, during his residence with his patron William Hayley at Felpham between 1799 and 1803, Blake went through what has been described as his 'conversion' experience. In evaluating Blake's 'radical Christianity' of the early period, the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church is of central importance. Emanuel Swedenborg's influence on the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries is all too easily forgotten in modern studies of the period. The heterodox programmes of the Swedenborgians provide with a concrete and identifiable subculture from which a number of essential themes in Blake’s works can be reassessed. Theosophical Christianity has its foundation in the premise that the divine must be mystically experienced in order to be known. In examining the connection between radical religion and radical politics, Swedenborgianism therefore plays a central role.