Crossing Channels

Abstract This chapter focuses on three key intellectuals of the Anglo-German exchange of ideas in the eighteenth century: Henry Fuseli, Georg Hamann, and Caspar Lavater. Henry Fuseli, the chapter shows, is not only the painter of English Gothic Romanticism but also one of the most important textual authors and translators in 1760s Enlightenment London. The second example, Hamann, appears as one of the main figures from the Anglo-German exchange of ideas who is relevant far beyond our current appreciation. The chapter closes by discussing Lavater’s role in the Anglo-German context. What it illustrates is how he not only connects Blake and Hamann in this historical way, but also through his neglected writings on language, which reveal a thinker whose ideas on the book of nature are remarkably close to Blake’s and Hamann’s. The multiple connections between Fuseli, Hamann, and Lavater, then, reveal the complexity and richness of the Anglo-German context in the eighteenth century.