TRACY CHEVALIER RELISHES historical settings. She has situated novels in 16th-century France, Edwardian London, medieval Paris and Brussels and – need I mention it – the Dutch Golden Age.

The common denominator is social change. This time we are in Georgian London amid the French Revolution. The composition usually includes a forbidden or precarious relationship too. This novel focuses on two teens – a shy, naive Dorset lad and a brassy, streetwise London girl. Finally, she gives us a dose of art in William Blake: poet, artist, printer, visionary and all-round radical.

It’s 1792, a time of industrialisation, and the city is steeped in smog. The Kellaway family has travelled to Lambeth after the death of a son. When Thomas secures a job as chair-maker for the circus, they move into Hercules Buildings. Along comes Maggie, the daughter of a dodgy schemer; she likes the quiet blond Jem and takes him under her wing.

The Kellaways’ neighbour sports a bonnet rouge, gets naked in the garden with his wife while reciting Paradise Lost, converses with the ghost of his brother and berates the circus-master for child exploitation. That’s Blake, at first blush. He is developing a method of illuminated printing and scribbling prophetic books.

Chevalier explores Blake’s worldly views alongside the teens’ inner struggles – Jem finding his place in a woeful city and grieving for his brother; Maggie doing factory labour and meeting bad men in alleys.

The most tangible example is his theory of “contraries”: If one bank of the river is innocence and the other is experience, Blake asks, what is in the middle? The children realise that “having the one don’t mean t’other be gone”, and Blake finds inspiration for Songs of Experience. The children are not young disciples, but butterflies flitting in his periphery.

Burning Bright is a visual delight. Chevalier’s meticulous brushstrokes allow us to hear the “youthful harlot’s curse” and feel “the damp souls of housemaids”. Yet much subtlety is lost in relentless historical detail and an uneasy third-person narration.

There is a host of action – a funeral procession, a circus, a parade over Westminster Bridge, a riot, two pregnancies, a murder (sort-of) – but the story unfolds dutifully with few surprises. The novel captures the tenderness of Blake’s work, but fails to rouse its vehemence. We yearn for more mysticism, less orthodoxy.

HarperCollins, £15.99

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