Talking of Virtuous Cats: An Island in the Moon

Abstract

An Island in the Moon, Blake’s most obviously comic work, has not found critical favour. Keynes called it ‘an incomplete burlesque novel’; Damon assumed much of it was simply ‘nonsensical and ignorant chatter’, Webster called it a mix of ‘scatalogical filth and pure lyrics used for defensive purposes’, and even Martha England, who, in her excellent essay ‘Apprenticeship at the Haymarket’, argued that in An Island Blake was imitating the work of Samuel Foote, a highly popular eighteenth- century comedian, still dismissed it as a youthful, one-off stab at comic writing penned merely so Blake could ‘flex... his vocal chords ... while he is making up his mind what William Blake shall take seriously’.¹ So too Michael Phillips, in his facsimile edition of the manuscript, while appreciating that An Island ‘derives much of its character and vitality from a particular development of that tradition, the burlesque play’ nevertheless suggests it is merely ‘a form of distraction ... intended [only] for a few friends who would share the delight of recognizing ... themselves’.² The general critical consensus is that the eleven surviving chapters of this unpublished manuscript form little more than Blake’s whimsical attempt to satirize his friends, neighbours and fellow attendees of 27 Rathbone Place, the intellectual salon of the Reverend and Mrs A. S. Mathew; a kind of pleasing cartoon wallpaper on which he couldn’t resist scrawling a few grotesque caricatures of his favourite scientific and philosophic bugbears.