William Blake, portrait by Thomas Phillips, 1807. Wikimedia Commons · public domain.
Poet · Pairing V
William Blake
1757–1827 · Poet, painter, and printmaker
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand.”
William Blake was a poet, painter, and engraver whose visionary genius went almost entirely unrecognized in his own lifetime. Trained as an engraver, he invented a method of “illuminated printing” to publish his poems hand-in-hand with his own hand-coloured illustrations, so that word and image were inseparable.
His most famous books, Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), set childlike, hopeful poems against darker companion pieces exposing the cruelty and injustice of the adult, industrial world. “London,” from Songs of Experience, is a searing indictment of a city where poverty, church, monarchy, and even the human mind conspire to imprison people.
Fiercely independent and deeply spiritual, Blake was long dismissed as eccentric. Today he is celebrated as one of the greatest and most original figures of the Romantic age.
In this curriculum
Read him in Pairing V — The Cityscape & the New Rhythm →