The Lost Moravian History of William Blake's Family: Snapshots from the Archive

Abstract

AbstractIn 2001, Dr. M. K. Schuchard discovered records relating to William Blake's mother, her first husband and possibly other connections of the Blake family, in the Moravian Church Library and Archive at Muswell Hill. A valuable new context for understanding Blake was thereby uncovered. The author discusses the background to this discovery, describes his own role in exploring the Archive and presents systematically the extensive archival data relating to Catherine Wright Armitage Blake, mother of the poet. The discoveries in the Moravian archive raise all sorts of questions about Blake's childhood, and about the milieu in which he grew up. Their effect is to shatter some entrenched preconceptions that have been dominant in Blake scholarship for a very long time. They alert us to the complexities of Blake's spiritual journey given his later connections to Swedenborgianism and Behmenism, and the Anglicanism that actually ran concurrently alongside all of these beliefs. Blake can now be linked to at least two definable religious movements (Moravian and Swedenborgian) which made up part of London's spiritual life. Moravianism (like his later Swedenborgianism) has left its recoverable traces in Blake's work. The author suggests that the future scholarly project will be to narrate the history of Blake's religious contacts and context within a contemporary religious culture that is much richer than we had hitherto imagined.