Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law

Witness Against the Beast is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study in which the renowned social historian E.P. Thompson contends that most of the assumptions scholars have made about William Blake are misleading and unfounded. Brilliantly reexamining Blake’s cultural milieu and intellectual background, Thompson detects in Blake’s poetry a repeated call to resist the usury and commercialism of the ＂Antichrist＂ embodied by contemporary society-to ＂witness against the beast.＂

E.P. Thompson (1924-1993) was one of England’s foremost historians and social critics. His books include Customs in Common, Witness Against the Beast, Making History, The Romantics, and The Essential E.P. Thompson (all published by The New Press), as well as The Making of the English Working Class.