Catherine Blake - Role in Literature

Role in Literature

It has often been suggested that the figure of Enitharmon in Blake's mythology is partly inspired by Catherine. Enitharmon is the wife of the "eternal prophet" Los in Blake's writings. Catherine is explicitly identified as the poet's "shadow of delight" in the second part of Blake's Milton: a Poem.

Catherine appears as a model wife in William Hayley's writings on ideal marriages. In more recent literature she is the central character in Janet Adele Warner's novel Other Sorrows, Other Joys: The Marriage of Catherine Sophia Boucher and William Blake (2001) and also features in Tracy Chevalier's novel Burning Bright (2007). She is an amateur detective in short stories by Keith Heller.

Jack Shepherd's stage play In Lambeth dramatised a visit by Thomas Paine to the Lambeth home of William and Catherine Blake in 1789. It was first performed at the East Dulwich Tavern in July 1989. The play was later adapted for television in the BBC Two Encounters series - which featured similar fictionalised meetings between historical figures - and was first broadcast on 4 July 1993. It was directed by Sebastian Graham-Jones, and featured Mark Rylance as William, Bob Peck as Paine, and Lesley Clare O'Neill as Catherine.