This is the only sketchbook from Samuel Palmer’s visionary early years not to have been destroyed after his death.

Its pages vividly illustrate the crucial period when Palmer, a nineteen-year-old in the grip of religious and artistic fervour, first experienced his revelatory vision of a divinely ordered heaven on Earth located in the landscape and community of a still deeply rural Kent. No other source provides such an intimate record of Palmer’s artistic and spiritual struggles.

All of the sketchbook’s 162 surviving pages are presented in their original sequence and at their actual size.

Martin Butlin provides authoritative commentaries, notes and an introduction to Palmer’s life, while William Vaughan places the sketchbook in the context of the art and aesthetic of its time.

The sketchbook was first issued by the William Blake Trust in a limited edition.

Martin Butlin was for many years Keeper of the Historic British Collection at the Tate Gallery. He is the author of the William Blake catalogue raisonné. William Vaughan is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Birkbeck College and the author of British Painting and Gainsborough, both published by Thames & Hudson.

Also of interest

Also by William Vaughan:
British Painting The Golden Age: from Hogarth to Turner
Gainsborough