Welcome to Litsy!

This is the imagined life of a woman who really lived in the late Eighteenth Century - Catherine Sophia Boucher, called Kate - wife of the English poet and artist, William Blake. If you read between the lines of his poetry and letters, this is a story you might find. Other Sorrows, Other Joys weaves fact and fiction to tell the story of Kate's search for identity in the shadow of a man who can "see a World in a Grain of Sand and Heaven in a Wild Flower." Conventional, innocent Kate struggles to understand the world around her in the midst of her visionary husband's free-thinking crusades for freedom in religion, in politics, in love. Janet Warner's original novel dramatically recreates the story of a poet and his spiritual companion and the mystic visions that haunt them both throughout their lives. As Kate works as Blake's assistant, printing and coloring his designs, she witnesses the psychic powers that distract William from earning a living. She endures the loss of a long-awaited child, Blake's fascination for gifted women, and his frightening trial for treason. Through Kate's eyes, we meet a parade of people prominent in 18th Century artistic circles during the time of the French Revolution, such as the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Swiss painter Henry Fuseli, and the publisher Joseph Johnson - people whose intertwined lives were as unconventional as any Bohemians of a later time. Amidst these turbulent personal and political events, Warner reveals the compelling drama of Kate and William's marriage that survived it all.