William Blake, poet, artist, and engraver, was born in Soho, London, on 28 November 1757 into a family of London shopkeepers and artisans. From childhood onwards, Blake had visionary experiences, and his father, while being circumspect about the content of his son’s visions, encouraged his artistic leanings. At the age of ten, Blake went to drawing school and was apprenticed at fourteen to James Basire, a printmaker who was also engraver to the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Blake presumably lived with his master for seven years. In 1779 he was admitted to the Royal Academy as a student, and after passing a three‐month probationary period, he was entitled to attend exhibitions and lectures for six years. Blake’s long‐held interest in poetry began to grow, and his range of reading, from Milton’s poetry to theology, combined with his interest in revolutionary changes to society, began to influence his writing and art. Poetical Sketches (1783), Blake’s first poetry collection, is not always reprinted in its entirety in selections of his poetry, but its original engagements with conventional themes and styles anticipate his later work.
Blake married Catherine Boucher in August 1782. Catherine may have been illiterate, entering an X in place of a signature on the register. After a few early quarrels, notably with Blake’s brother Robert, when Blake made his wife apologize to his brother, their marriage was happy, with Catherine steadfastly supporting her husband throughout his career. He exhibited his art several times at the Royal Academy and began to attend the New Jerusalem church, which based its teachings on the thought of Emanuel Swedenborg. A commission from John and Josiah Boydell to create his largest copy engraving, Beggar’s Opera, after a painting by William Hogarth, helped the Blakes move to the well‐appointed 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth where they enjoyed a period of prosperity. Always a prolific worker, Blake engraved and wrote The Book of Thel (1789) and the Songs of Innocence (1789), but commercial success was stymied, in part, owing to Blake’s practice of engraving each individual copy. He was also at work on a number of commissions, including Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden (1791) and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life (1791). Blake rejected Swedenborg’s teachings and published The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), which reverses traditional doctrine in favour of a sensual, Satanic voice. Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793) reinforces Blake’s radical and apocalyptic world‐view, along with America a Prophecy (1793) and Europe (1794), which blend real places and people with Blake’s imaginative scheme. In 1794 Songs of Innocence and of Experience was published. Blake was commissioned in 1795 to engrave plates for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, but the project failed to be a commercial success. He began to work on Vala, or, The Four Zoas, but it was never completed. His friendship with William Hayley led Hayley to invite Blake to work for him, and in 1800 Blake moved with his wife to Felpham, Sussex. After an initial period of content, tension grew between Hayley and Blake, and the Blakes intended to move back to London. However, in 1803, while the couple were still in Felpham, a soldier, John Scolfield, entered Blake’s garden, and the subsequent quarrel between Blake and Scolfield led to the soldier accusing Blake of sedition. Though Blake was later acquitted of all charges, it was a stressful period. Blake remained productive, beginning Milton (engraved 1809) and Jerusalem (completed 1820), and writing ‘Auguries of Innocence’ and ‘The Mental Traveller’ (1804). Despite the showing of two of his watercolours in the 1808 Royal Academy exhibition, Blake felt neglected, and in 1809 he held the only exhibition of his work, which met with critical disregard and mockery of his mental state: no sales are recorded, and the Blakes lived in some poverty. However, Blake became a friend of John Linnell, an artist, who offered him various commissions, and their friendship lasted until Linnell’s death. Blake found himself surrounded by young followers introduced to him by Linnell, and his creativity continued up to his death on 12 August 1827. Blake’s radical apocalyptic poetry and engravings reveal the importance of his maxim, ‘One Power alone makes a Poet – Imagination, The Divine Vision’.1
Robert N. Essick, ‘Blake, William (1757–1827)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, October 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2585, accessed 14 September 2015]; William Blake (1757–1827): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2585; David Punter, ‘William Blake’, The Literary Encyclopedia, first published 07 July 2001 [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5182, accessed 14 September 2015]; Duncan Wu, ‘William Blake (1757–1827)’, in Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu, 4th edn (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), pp. 174–80.