dumbfoundry

Academics in Nottingham have traced the mother of the great visionary, whose work is shot through with erotic imagery, to a village close to the birthplace of that other sexually pioneering writer, DH Lawrence.

The two-year programme is expected to uncover the full and previously unsuspected Midlands background of Blake, including his family´s involvement with radical sectarians whose "wanton practices" pre-dated Lady Chatterley´s Lover by 200 years.

The team at Nottingham Trent University traced the birthplace of Blake's mother Catherine - long a mysterious figure - to the village of Walkeringham, north of Retford, where an 18th-century branch of the Moravian Brethren took vigorous root.

The group's beliefs, including reverence for women's genitals as "a model of the chapel of God where husbands must worship daily", are expected to shed new light on the origins of Blake's own sexual enthusiasm.

Blake praised "happy copulation" and was famously discovered by a neighbour nude in his London garden, acting out with his wife the return of Adam into paradise.

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