Help William Blake Save His Cottage

The cottage William Blake lived in while writing two of his most beloved works, "Milton" and "Jerusalem," is currently on the market and the Blake Society has been offered a cherry deal to swipe it up and turn it into a Blake museum. But they need help from all the Blake lovers out there! From the Guardian:

A campaign to crowdfund the £520,000 needed to buy the cottage on the Sussex coast where William Blake hymned ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ is due to launch next week.

Blake lived in the thatched cottage in Felpham, West Sussex, between 1800 and 1803, composing much of his epic poem Milton, and the poem which became the much-love hymn Jerusalem, beneath its “thatched roof of rusted gold” – and according to literary legend reading Paradise Lost to his wife Catherine while the pair sat naked in the garden. The property came on to the market last year for the first time since 1928, for an asking price of £650,000; the Blake Society has since negotiated a purchase price of £520,000, which it has until the 31 October to raise. There is too little time to seek the money from more traditional funding organisations, so it is turning to the public.

Intending to turn the cottage into a place which celebrates Blake, “welcomes visitors, poets, artists and scholars to continue his legacy”, and is “an exemplar of a way to live a life through courage and creativity”, the Blake Society’s campaign is backed by literary fans of the author from Philip Pullman to Stephen Fry, Alan Moore and Russell Brand.

Purchasing this cottage to save for posterity is doubly important, given that it represents 1 of 2 residences where Blake lived that are still standing:

Once the cottage is purchased, the society intends that it will be put into a charitable trust to be held in perpetuity for the benefit of the nation.

“In his lifetime Blake lived in nine houses. Only two survive. The other house is in London, and people are always welcome there to talk about Blake, but it’s not a museum and has a very small capacity. The idea is to link these two remaining houses where Blake lived,” said Heath. “Literary houses can have a detached connection to their author, but for Blake place was so important that it seems extraordinary that in Britain we don’t celebrate these two extraordinary houses.”

Read on at the Guardian, and head to the Blake Society to see how you can participate in the campaign.