ABSTRACT
Allan Cunningham’s skilful anecdotal biography of Blake in his Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. II (1830), pp. 140–79 (expanded in the second edition, vol. II [1830], pp. 143–88), was probably the most important factor in keeping Blake’s name alive from 1830 until Gilchrist’s epochal Life in 1863. He had good information, for he not only inquired among Blake’s friends and borrowed extensively from the essays by B.H.Malkin and J.T.Smith, but, he said, ‘I know Blake’s character, for I knew the man.’ 1
