Jerry Nolan rediscovered William Beckford some seven years ago during his research into the work of the Irish painter Francis Danby whose large picture ‘The Opening of the Sixth Seal’ was first owned by Beckford. In an ongoing series of articles which have been published in The Beckford Journal (Vol. 3 Spring 1997 – Vol. 7 Spring 2001), Jerry Nolan has explored the subtleties of Beckford’s religious and political tendencies which tend to be somewhat neglected at a time when there has been an over concentration on the Caliph’s ‘eye for the magnificent’. As a further part of his plan to rescue Beckford from the exclusive possession of the aesthetes, the connoisseurs and the academic critics, Jerry Nolan has lectured on Beckford to National Trust Associations and to University of the Third Age groups who have surprisingly responded very well to Beckford as a radical critic of English society – then and now!

PUBLICATIONS
[in the Beckford Journal]


'Ah Dear Comet...'Beckford and the Apocalyptic Art of West and Danby, Vol 3, Spring 1997, 8-19
[a slightly amended version is provided here]

The Devotee Glances at the Glorious One, Vol 4 Spring 1998, 39-47

Beckford's Excursion to the Grande Chartreuse Revised, Vol 5 Spring 1999, 33-42

William, Elizabeth and William or Female Impersonation and Radical Satire, Vol
6 Spring 2000, 35-45

'Liber Veritatis' or Why has the Child been so Abused?, Vol 7 Spring 2001, 2-10

Brief Encounter of Beckford and Disraeli, or The Radical Pair of 'Oriental Voluptaries', Vol 8 Spring 2002, 66-78 [a slightly amended version is provided here]

A detail from a mezzotint version of Francis Danby's painting ‘The Opening of the Sixth Seal’.

[This page was last updated on August 30, 2002]