William Blake

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For other people named William Blake, see William Blake (disambiguation).

WilliamBlake

Blakeinaportrait
byThomasPhillips(1807)
Born

28November1757
Soho,London,GreatBritain

Died

12August1827(aged69)
CharingCross,London,GreatBritain[1]

Occupation

Poet,painter,printmaker

Genre

Visionary,poetry

Literary
movement

Romanticism

Notable
works

SongsofInnocenceandofExperience,TheMarriage
ofHeavenandHell,TheFour

Zoas,Jerusalem,Milton,Anddidthosefeetinancient
time
Spouse

CatherineBoucher(17821827,hisdeath)

Signature

William Blake (28 November 1757 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker.
Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of
the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic works have been said to form "what is in
proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".[2] His visual artistry led
one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".
[3]
In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.[4] Although he
lived in London his entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham),[5] he produced a diverse and
symbolically rich uvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God"[6] or "human existence
itself".[7]
Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high
regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical
undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic
movement and as "Pre-Romantic".[8] Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England (indeed,
to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of
the French and American Revolutions.[9] Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he
maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by
thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg.[10] Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's
work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised him as a
"glorious luminary",[11] and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with
contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".[12]

Contents
[hide]

1Early life

1.1Apprenticeship to Basire

1.2Royal Academy

1.3Gordon Riots

1.4Marriage and early career

1.5Relief etching

1.6Engravings
2Later life and career

2.1Felpham

2.2Return to London

2.2.1Dante's Divine Comedy

2.2.2Death

3Politics

4Development of Blake's views

5Sexuality
o

5.119th-century "free love" movement

6Religious views

6.1Enlightenment philosophy
7Assessment

7.1Creative mindset

7.2Visions

8Cultural influence

9Exhibitions

10Bibliography
o

10.1Illuminated books

10.2Non-illuminated

10.3Illustrated by Blake

10.4On Blake

11References

12Further reading

13External links

Early life[edit]

28 Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in an illustration of 1912. Blake was born here and lived
here until he was 25. The house was demolished in 1965. [13]
William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick St.) in Soho, London.
He was the third of seven children,[14][15] two of whom died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier.
[15]
He attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was
otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake (ne Wright).[16] Even though the Blakes
were English Dissenters,[17] William was baptised on 11 December at St James's Church, Piccadilly,
London.[18] The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of
inspiration throughout his life.
Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, a
practice that was preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to
classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck and Albrecht
Drer. The number of prints and bound books that James and Catherine were able to purchase for
young William suggests that the Blakes enjoyed, at least for a time, a comfortable wealth.[17] When
William was ten years old, his parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not
sent to school but instead enrolled in drawing classes at Pars's drawing school in the Strand.[19] He read
avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake made explorations into poetry; his early
work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, and the Psalms.

Apprenticeship to Basire[edit]

The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake's work. Here,

the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a
series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental
Prophecies.
On 4 August 1772, Blake was apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, at the sum
of 52.10, for a term of seven years.[15] At the end of the term, aged 21, he became a professional
engraver. No record survives of any serious disagreement or conflict between the two during the period
of Blake's apprenticeship, but Peter Ackroyd's biography notes that Blake later added Basire's name to a
list of artistic adversaries and then crossed it out.[20] This aside, Basire's style of line-engraving was of
a kind held at the time to be old-fashioned compared to the flashier stipple or mezzotint styles.[21] It has
been speculated that Blake's instruction in this outmoded form may have been detrimental to his
acquiring of work or recognition in later life.
After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London (perhaps
to settle a quarrel between Blake and James Parker, his fellow apprentice). His experiences
in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with
suits of armour, painted funeral effigies and varicoloured waxworks. Ackroyd notes that "...the most
immediate [impression] would have been of faded brightness and colour".[22] This close study of the
Gothic (which he saw as the "living form") left clear traces in his style.[23] In the long afternoons Blake
spent sketching in the Abbey, he was occasionally interrupted by boys from Westminster School, who
were allowed in the Abbey. They teased him and one tormented him so much that Basire knocked the
boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence".[24] After Basire complained to
the Dean, the schoolboys' privilege was withdrawn.[23] Blake experienced visions in the Abbey, he saw
Christ and his Apostles and a great procession of monks and priests and heard their chant.[23]

Royal Academy[edit]
On 8 October 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy in Old Somerset House, near
the Strand. While the terms of his study required no payment, he was expected to supply his own
materials throughout the six-year period. There, he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished
style of fashionable painters such as Rubens, championed by the school's first president, Joshua

Reynolds. Over time, Blake came to detest Reynolds' attitude towards art, especially his pursuit of
"general truth" and "general beauty". Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that the "disposition to
abstractions, to generalising and classification, is the great glory of the human mind"; Blake responded,
in marginalia to his personal copy, that "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone
Distinction of Merit".[25] Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent humility, which he held to be a form of
hypocrisy. Against Reynolds' fashionable oil painting, Blake preferred the Classical precision of his early
influences, Michelangelo and Raphael.
David Bindman suggests that Blake's antagonism towards Reynolds arose not so much from the
president's opinions (like Blake, Reynolds held history painting to be of greater value than landscape
and portraiture), but rather "against his hypocrisy in not putting his ideals into practice."[26] Certainly
Blake was not averse to exhibiting at the Royal Academy, submitting works on six occasions between
1780 and 1808.
Blake became a friend of John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and George Cumberland during his first year
at the Royal Academy. They shared radical views, with Stothard and Cumberland joining the Society for
Constitutional Information.[27]

Gordon Riots[edit]
Blake's first biographer, Alexander Gilchrist, records that in June 1780 Blake was walking towards
Basire's shop in Great Queen Street when he was swept up by a rampaging mob that stormed Newgate
Prison.[28] The mob attacked the prison gates with shovels and pickaxes, set the building ablaze, and
released the prisoners inside. Blake was reportedly in the front rank of the mob during the attack. The
riots, in response to a parliamentary bill revoking sanctions against Roman Catholicism, became known
as the Gordon Riotsand provoked a flurry of legislation from the government of George III, and the
creation of the first police force.

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (1786)

Marriage and early career[edit]

Blake met Catherine Boucher in 1782 when he was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in
a refusal of his marriage proposal. He recounted the story of his heartbreak for Catherine and her
parents, after which he asked Catherine, "Do you pity me?" When she responded affirmatively, he
declared, "Then I love you." Blake married Catherine who was five years his junior on 18 August
1782 in St Mary's Church, Battersea. Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an X. The
original wedding certificate may be viewed at the church, where a commemorative stained-glass window
was installed between 1976 and 1982.[29] Later, in addition to teaching Catherine to read and write, Blake
trained her as an engraver. Throughout his life she proved an invaluable aid, helping to print
his illuminated works and maintaining his spirits throughout numerous misfortunes.
Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was printed around 1783.[30] After his father's death,
Blake and former fellow apprentice James Parker opened a print shop in 1784, and began working with
radical publisher Joseph Johnson.[31] Johnson's house was a meeting-place for some leading English

intellectual dissidents of the time: theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley, philosopher Richard Price,
artist John Henry Fuseli,[32] early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and English-American
revolutionary Thomas Paine. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had great
hopes for the French and American revolutions and wore a Phrygian cap in solidarity with the French
revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in France. In 1784
Blake composed his unfinished manuscript An Island in the Moon.
Blake illustrated Original Stories from Real Life (2nd edition, 1791) by Mary Wollstonecraft. They seem
to have shared some views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage, but there is no evidence
proving without doubt that they actually met. In 1793's Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake
condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of
women to complete self-fulfilment.
From 1790 to 1800, William Blake lived in North Lambeth, London, at 13 Hercules Buildings, Hercules
Road.[33] The property was demolished in 1918, but the site is now marked with a plaque.[34] There is a
series of 70 mosaics inspired by Blake in the nearby railway tunnels of Waterloo Station.[35][36]

Relief etching[edit]
In 1788, aged 31, Blake experimented with relief etching, a method he used to produce most of his
books, paintings, pamphlets and poems. The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and the
finished products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the
poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could
appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in
acid to dissolve the untreated copper and leave the design standing in relief (hence the name).
This is a reversal of the usual method of etching, where the lines of the design are exposed to the acid,
and the plate printed by the intaglio method. Relief etching (which Blake referred to as "stereotype"
in The Ghost of Abel) was intended as a means for producing his illuminated books more quickly than
via intaglio. Stereotype, a process invented in 1725, consisted of making a metal cast from a wood
engraving, but Blake's innovation was, as described above, very different. The pages printed from these
plates were hand-coloured in water colours and stitched together to form a volume. Blake used
illuminated printing for most of his well-known works, including Songs of Innocence and of
Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem.[37]

Engravings[edit]
Although Blake has become most famous for his relief etching, his commercial work largely consisted
of intaglio engraving, the standard process of engraving in the 18th century in which the artist incised an
image into the copper plate, a complex and laborious process, with plates taking months or years to
complete, but as Blake's contemporary, John Boydell, realised, such engraving offered a "missing link
with commerce", enabling artists to connect with a mass audience and became an immensely important
activity by the end of the 18th century.[38]
Blake employed intaglio engraving in his own work, most notably for the illustrations of the Book of Job,
completed just before his death. Most critical work has concentrated on Blake's relief etching as a
technique because it is the most innovative aspect of his art, but a 2009 study drew attention to Blake's
surviving plates, including those for the Book of Job: they demonstrate that he made frequent use of a
technique known as "repoussage", a means of obliterating mistakes by hammering them out by hitting
the back of the plate. Such techniques, typical of engraving work of the time, are very different to the
much faster and fluid way of drawing on a plate that Blake employed for his relief etching, and indicates
why the engravings took so long to complete.[39]

Later life and career[edit]

The cottage in Felpham where Blake lived from 1800 until 1803.
Blake's marriage to Catherine was close and devoted until his death. Blake taught Catherine to write,
and she helped him colour his printed poems.[40] Gilchrist refers to "stormy times" in the early years of the
marriage.[41]Some biographers have suggested that Blake tried to bring a concubine into the marriage
bed in accordance with the beliefs of the more radical branches of the Swedenborgian Society,[42] but
other scholars have dismissed these theories as conjecture.[43] William and Catherine's first daughter and
last child might be Thel described in The Book of Thel who was conceived as dead.[44]

The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, 1795. Blake's vision of Hecate, Greek goddess of black magic and
the underworld

Felpham[edit]
In 1800, Blake moved to a cottage at Felpham, in Sussex (now West Sussex), to take up a job
illustrating the works of William Hayley, a minor poet. It was in this cottage that Blake began Milton (the
title page is dated 1804, but Blake continued to work on it until 1808). The preface to this work includes
a poem beginning "And did those feet in ancient time", which became the words for the anthem
"Jerusalem". Over time, Blake began to resent his new patron, believing that Hayley was uninterested in

true artistry, and preoccupied with "the meer drudgery of business" (E724). Blake's disenchantment with
Hayley has been speculated to have influenced Milton: a Poem, in which Blake wrote that "Corporeal
Friends are Spiritual Enemies". (4:26, E98)
Blake's trouble with authority came to a head in August 1803, when he was involved in a physical
altercation with a soldier, John Schofield.[45] Blake was charged not only with assault, but with uttering
seditious and treasonable expressions against the king. Schofield claimed that Blake had exclaimed
"Damn the king. The soldiers are all slaves."[46] Blake was cleared in the Chichester assizes of the
charges. According to a report in the Sussex county paper, "[T]he invented character of [the evidence]
was ... so obvious that an acquittal resulted".[47]Schofield was later depicted wearing "mind forged
manacles" in an illustration to Jerusalem.[48]

Return to London[edit]

Sketch of Blake from circa 1804 by John Flaxman

Blake returned to London in 1804 and began to write and illustrate Jerusalem (180420), his most
ambitious work. Having conceived the idea of portraying the characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
Blake approached the dealer Robert Cromek, with a view to marketing an engraving. Knowing Blake
was too eccentric to produce a popular work, Cromek promptly commissioned Blake's friend Thomas
Stothard to execute the concept. When Blake learned he had been cheated, he broke off contact with
Stothard. He set up an independent exhibition in his brother's haberdashery shop at 27 Broad Street
in Soho. The exhibition was designed to market his own version of the Canterbury illustration (titled The
Canterbury Pilgrims), along with other works. As a result, he wrote his Descriptive Catalogue (1809),
which contains what Anthony Blunt called a "brilliant analysis" of Chaucer and is regularly anthologised
as a classic of Chaucer criticism.[49] It also contained detailed explanations of his other paintings. The
exhibition was very poorly attended, selling none of the temperas or watercolours. Its only review, in The
Examiner, was hostile.[50]

Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (1805) is one of a series of
illustrations of Revelation 12.
Also around this time (circa 1808), Blake gave vigorous expression of views on art in an extensive series
of polemical annotations to the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, denouncing the Royal Academy as a
fraud and proclaiming, "To Generalize is to be an Idiot".[51]
In 1818, he was introduced by George Cumberland's son to a young artist named John Linnell.[52] A blue
plaque commemorates Blake and Linnell at Old Wyldes' at North End, Hampstead.[53] Through Linnell he
met Samuel Palmer, who belonged to a group of artists who called themselves the Shoreham Ancients.
The group shared Blake's rejection of modern trends and his belief in a spiritual and artistic New Age.
Aged 65, Blake began work on illustrations for the Book of Job, later admired by Ruskin, who compared
Blake favourably to Rembrandt, and by Vaughan Williams, who based his ballet Job: A Masque for
Dancing on a selection of the illustrations.
In later life Blake began to sell a great number of his works, particularly his Bible illustrations, to Thomas
Butts, a patron who saw Blake more as a friend than a man whose work held artistic merit; this was
typical of the opinions held of Blake throughout his life.

Dante's Divine Comedy[edit]

William Blake's image of the Minotaur to illustrate Inferno, Canto XII,1228, The Minotaur XII

"Head of William Blake" by James De Ville. Life mask taken in plaster cast in September
1823, Fitzwilliam Museum
The commission for Dante's Divine Comedy came to Blake in 1826 through Linnell, with the aim of
producing a series of engravings. Blake's death in 1827 cut short the enterprise, and only a handful of
watercolours were completed, with only seven of the engravings arriving at proof form. Even so, they
have evoked praise:
'[T]he Dante watercolours are among Blake's richest achievements, engaging fully with the
problem of illustrating a poem of this complexity. The mastery of watercolour has reached an
even higher level than before, and is used to extraordinary effect in differentiating the
atmosphere of the three states of being in the poem'.[54]

Blake's The Lovers' Whirlwindillustrates Hell in Canto V of Dante's Inferno

Blake's illustrations of the poem are not merely accompanying works, but rather seem to critically
revise, or furnish commentary on, certain spiritual or moral aspects of the text.
Because the project was never completed, Blake's intent may be obscured. Some indicators bolster
the impression that Blake's illustrations in their totality would take issue with the text they
accompany: In the margin of Homer Bearing the Sword and His Companions, Blake notes, "Every
thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the
Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost." Blake seems to dissent from
Dante's admiration of the poetic works of ancient Greece, and from the apparent glee with which
Dante allots punishments in Hell (as evidenced by the grim humour of the cantos).
At the same time, Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and the corruptive nature of power,
and clearly relished the opportunity to represent the atmosphere and imagery of Dante's work
pictorially. Even as he seemed to be near death, Blake's central preoccupation was his feverish
work on the illustrations to Dante's Inferno; he is said to have spent one of the very last shillings he
possessed on a pencil to continue sketching.[55]

Death[edit]

Monument near Blake's unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields in London

Blake's last years were spent at Fountain Court off the Strand (the property was demolished in the
1880s, when the Savoy Hotel was built).[1] On the day of his death (12 August 1827), Blake worked
relentlessly on his Dante series. Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife,
who was in tears by his bedside. Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried, "Stay Kate! Keep just
as you are I will draw your portrait for you have ever been an angel to me." Having completed
this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses.[56] At six that
evening, after promising his wife that he would be with her always, Blake died. Gilchrist reports that
a female lodger in the house, present at his expiration, said, "I have been at the death, not of a
man, but of a blessed angel."[57]
George Richmond gives the following account of Blake's death in a letter to Samuel Palmer:
He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country he had all His life
wished to see & expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ Just before
he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of the things he
saw in Heaven.[58]
Catherine paid for Blake's funeral with money lent to her by Linnell. He was buried five days after
his death on the eve of his 45th wedding anniversary at the Dissenter's burial ground in Bunhill
Fields, in what is today in the Borough of Islington, London.[59] His parents were interred in the same
grounds. Present at the ceremonies were Catherine, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, Frederick
Tatham and John Linnell. Following Blake's death, Catherine moved into Tatham's house as a
housekeeper. She believed she was regularly visited by Blake's spirit. She continued selling his
illuminated works and paintings, but entertained no business transaction without first "consulting Mr.
Blake".[60] On the day of her death, in October 1831, she was as calm and cheerful as her husband,
and called out to him "as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him, and it
would not be long now".[61]
On her death, Blake's manuscripts were inherited by Frederick Tatham, who burned some he
deemed heretical or politically radical. Tatham was an Irvingite, one of the many fundamentalist

movements of the 19th century, and opposed to any work that smacked of blasphemy.[62] John
Linnell erased sexual imagery from a number of Blake's drawings.[63]
Since 1965, the exact location of William Blake's grave had been lost and forgotten as gravestones
were taken away to create a lawn. Blakes grave is commemorated by a stone that reads "Near by
lie the remains of the poet-painter William Blake 17571827 and his wife Catherine Sophia 1762
1831". The memorial stone is situated approximately 20 metres away from the actual grave, which
is not marked. Members of the group Friends of William Blake have rediscovered the location and
intend to place a permanent memorial at the site.[64][65]
Blake is recognised as a saint in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Blake Prize for Religious
Art was established in his honour in Australia in 1949. In 1957 a memorial to Blake and his wife was
erected in Westminster Abbey.[66]

Politics[edit]
Blake was not active in any well-established political party. His poetry consistently embodies an
attitude of rebellion against the abuse of class power as documented in David Erdman's large
study Blake: Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His Own Times. Blake
was concerned about senseless wars and the blighting effects of the Industrial Revolution. Much of
his poetry recounts in symbolic allegory the effects of the French and American revolutions.
Erdman claims Blake was disillusioned with them, believing they had simply replaced monarchy
with irresponsible mercantilism and notes Blake was deeply opposed to slavery, and believes some
of his poems read primarily as championing "free love" have had their anti-slavery implications
short-changed.[67] A more recent (and very short) study, William Blake: Visionary Anarchist by Peter
Marshall (1988), classified Blake and his contemporary William Godwin as forerunners of
modern anarchism.[68] British Marxist historian E. P. Thompson's last finished work, Witness Against
the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law(1993), shows how far he was inspired by dissident
religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the
English Civil War.

Development of Blake's views[edit]

Because Blake's later poetry contains a private mythology with complex symbolism, his late work
has been less published than his earlier more accessible work. The Vintage anthology of Blake
edited by Patti Smith focuses heavily on the earlier work, as do many critical studies such
as William Blake by D. G. Gillham.
The earlier work is primarily rebellious in character and can be seen as a protest against dogmatic
religion especially notable in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which the figure represented by
the "Devil" is virtually a hero rebelling against an imposter authoritarian deity. In later works, such
as Milton and Jerusalem, Blake carves a distinctive vision of a humanity redeemed by self-sacrifice
and forgiveness, while retaining his earlier negative attitude towards what he felt was the rigid and
morbid authoritarianism of traditional religion. Not all readers of Blake agree upon how much
continuity exists between Blake's earlier and later works.
Psychoanalyst June Singer has written that Blake's late work displayed a development of the ideas
first introduced in his earlier works, namely, the humanitarian goal of achieving personal wholeness
of body and spirit. The final section of the expanded edition of her Blake study The Unholy
Bible suggests the later works are the "Bible of Hell" promised in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Regarding Blake's final poem "Jerusalem", she writes: "The promise of the divine in man, made
in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, is at last fulfilled."[69]
John Middleton Murry notes discontinuity between Marriage and the late works, in that while the
early Blake focused on a "sheer negative opposition between Energy and Reason", the later Blake
emphasised the notions of self-sacrifice and forgiveness as the road to interior wholeness. This
renunciation of the sharper dualism of Marriage of Heaven and Hell is evidenced in particular by the

humanisation of the character of Urizen in the later works. Murry characterises the later Blake as
having found "mutual understanding" and "mutual forgiveness".[70]

Sexuality[edit]
19th-century "free love" movement[edit]
Since his death, William Blake has been claimed by those of various movements who apply his
complex and often elusive use of symbolism and allegory to the issues that concern them.[71] In
particular, Blake is sometimes considered (along with Mary Wollstonecraftand her husband William
Godwin) a forerunner of the 19th-century "free love" movement, a broad reform tradition starting in
the 1820s that held that marriage is slavery, and advocated the removal of all state restrictions on
sexual activity such as homosexuality, prostitution, and adultery, culminating in the birth control
movement of the early 20th century. Blake scholarship was more focused on this theme in the
earlier 20th century than today, although it is still mentioned notably by the Blake scholar Magnus
Ankarsj who moderately challenges this interpretation. The 19th-century "free love" movement was
not particularly focused on the idea of multiple partners, but did agree with Wollstonecraft that
state-sanctioned marriage was "legal prostitution" and monopolistic in character. It has somewhat
more in common with early feminist movements[72] (particularly with regard to the writings of Mary
Wollstonecraft, whom Blake admired).
Blake was critical of the marriage laws of his day, and generally railed against traditional Christian
notions of chastity as a virtue.[73] At a time of tremendous strain in his marriage, in part due to
Catherine's apparent inability to bear children, he directly advocated bringing a second wife into the
house.[74] His poetry suggests that external demands for marital fidelity reduce love to mere duty
rather than authentic affection, and decries jealousy and egotism as a motive for marriage laws.
Poems such as "Why should I be bound to thee, O my lovely Myrtle-tree?" and "Earth's Answer"
seem to advocate multiple sexual partners. In his poem "London" he speaks of "the MarriageHearse" plagued by "the youthful Harlot's curse", the result alternately of false Prudence and/or
Harlotry. Visions of the Daughters of Albion is widely (though not universally) read as a tribute to
free love since the relationship between Bromion and Oothoon is held together only by laws and not
by love. For Blake, law and love are opposed, and he castigates the "frozen marriage-bed".
In Visions, Blake writes:
Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot, is bound
In spells of law to one she loathes? and must she drag the chain
Of life in weary lust? (5.21-3, E49)
In the 19th century, poet and free love advocate Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote a book on
Blake drawing attention to the above motifs in which Blake praises "sacred natural love" that is not
bound by another's possessive jealousy, the latter characterised by Blake as a "creeping skeleton".
[75]
Swinburne notes how Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell condemns the hypocrisy of the "pale
religious letchery" of advocates of traditional norms.[76] Another 19th-century free love
advocate, Edward Carpenter (18441929), was influenced by Blake's mystical emphasis on energy
free from external restrictions.[77]
In the early 20th century, Pierre Berger described how Blake's views echo Mary Wollstonecraft's
celebration of joyful authentic love rather than love born of duty,[78] the former being the true
measure of purity.[79] Irene Langridge notes that "in Blake's mysterious and unorthodox creed the
doctrine of free love was something Blake wanted for the edification of 'the soul'."[80] Michael Davis's
1977 book William Blake a New Kind of Man suggests that Blake thought jealousy separates man
from the divine unity, condemning him to a frozen death.[81]
As a theological writer, Blake has a sense of human "fallenness". S. Foster Damon noted that for
Blake the major impediments to a free love society were corrupt human nature, not merely the
intolerance of society and the jealousy of men, but the inauthentic hypocritical nature of human
communication.[82] Thomas Wright's 1928 book Life of William Blake (entirely devoted to Blake's

doctrine of free love) notes that Blake thinks marriage should in practice afford the joy of love, but
notes that in reality it often does not,[83] as a couple's knowledge of being chained often diminishes
their joy. Pierre Berger also analyses Blake's early mythological poems such as Ahania as declaring
marriage laws to be a consequence of the fallenness of humanity, as these are born from pride and
jealousy.[84]
Some scholars have noted that Blake's views on "free love" are both qualified and may have
undergone shifts and modifications in his late years. Some poems from this period warn of dangers
of predatory sexuality such as The Sick Rose. Magnus Ankarsj notes that while the hero
of Visions of the Daughters of Albion is a strong advocate of free love, by the end of the poem she
has become more circumspect as her awareness of the dark side of sexuality has grown, crying
"Can this be love which drinks another as a sponge drinks water?"[85] Ankarsj also notes that a
major inspiration to Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, similarly developed more circumspect views of
sexual freedom late in life. In light of Blake's aforementioned sense of human 'fallenness' Ankarsj
thinks Blake does not fully approve of sensual indulgence merely in defiance of law as exemplified
by the female character of Leutha,[86] since in the fallen world of experience all love is enchained.
[87]
Ankarsj records Blake as having supported a commune with some sharing of partners, though
David Worrall read The Book of Thel as a rejection of the proposal to take concubines espoused by
some members of the Swedenborgian church.[88]
Blake's later writings show a renewed interest in Christianity, and although he radically reinterprets
Christian morality in a way that embraces sensual pleasure, there is little of the emphasis on sexual
libertarianism found in several of his early poems, and there is advocacy of "self-denial", though
such abnegation must be inspired by love rather than through authoritarian compulsion.[89] Berger
(more so than Swinburne) is especially sensitive to a shift in sensibility between the early Blake and
the later Blake. Berger believes the young Blake placed too much emphasis on following impulses,
[90]
and that the older Blake had a better formed ideal of a true love that sacrifices self. Some
celebration of mystical sensuality remains in the late poems (most notably in Blake's denial of the
virginity of Jesus's mother). However, the late poems also place a greater emphasis on forgiveness,
redemption, and emotional authenticity as a foundation for relationships.

Religious views[edit]
Blake's Ancient of Days. The "Ancient of Days" is described in Chapter 7 of the Book of
Daniel. This image depicts Copy D of the illustration currently held at the British Museum.
[91]

Although Blake's attacks on conventional religion were shocking in his own day, his rejection of
religiosity was not a rejection of religion per se. His view of orthodoxy is evident in The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell. Therein, Blake lists several Proverbs of Hell, among which are the following:

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

As the catterpillar [sic] chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse
on the fairest joys. (8.21, 9.55, E36)

In The Everlasting Gospel, Blake does not present Jesus as a philosopher or traditional messianic
figure, but as a supremely creative being, above dogma, logic and even morality:
If he had been Antichrist Creeping Jesus,
He'd have done anything to please us:
Gone sneaking into Synagogues
And not us'd the Elders & Priests like Dogs,
But humble as a Lamb or Ass,
Obey'd himself to Caiaphas.
God wants not Man to Humble himself (5561, E51920)

Jesus, for Blake, symbolises the vital relationship and unity between divinity and humanity: "All had
originally one language, and one religion: this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel.
Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus." (Descriptive Catalogue, Plate 39, E543)
Blake designed his own mythology, which appears largely in his prophetic books. Within these he
describes a number of characters, including "Urizen", "Enitharmon", "Bromion" and "Luvah". His
mythology seems to have a basis in the Bible as well as Greek and Norse mythology,[92][93] and it
accompanies his ideas about the everlasting Gospel.
"ImustCreateaSystem,orbeenslav'dbyanotherMan's.Iwillnot
Reason&Compare;mybusinessistoCreate."
WordsutteredbyLosinBlake'sJerusalemTheEmanationoftheGiant
Albion.
One of Blake's strongest objections to orthodox Christianity is that he felt it encouraged the
suppression of natural desires and discouraged earthly joy. In A Vision of the Last Judgment, Blake
says that:
Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governd their Passions or have
No Passions but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are
not Negations of Passion but Realities of Intellect from which All the Passions Emanate Uncurbed
in their Eternal Glory. (E564)
His words concerning religion in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, called Good, is alone from the
Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the
five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of
Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight. (Plate 4, E34)

The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve, c. 1825. Watercolour on wood.
Blake does not subscribe to the notion of a body distinct from the soul that must submit to the rule
of the soul, but sees the body as an extension of the soul, derived from the "discernment" of the
senses. Thus, the emphasis orthodoxy places upon the denial of bodily urges is a dualistic error

born of misapprehension of the relationship between body and soul. Elsewhere, he describes Satan
as the "state of error", and as beyond salvation.[94]
Blake opposed the sophistry of theological thought that excuses pain, admits evil and apologises for
injustice. He abhorred self-denial,[95] which he associated with religious repression and
particularly sexual repression:[96]"Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. / He who
desires but acts not breeds pestilence." (7.45, E35) He saw the concept of "sin" as a trap to bind
men's desires (the briars of Garden of Love), and believed that restraint in obedience to a moral
code imposed from the outside was against the spirit of life:
Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs & flaming hair
But Desire Gratified
Plants fruits & beauty there. (E474)
He did not hold with the doctrine of God as Lord, an entity separate from and superior to mankind;
[97]
this is shown clearly in his words about Jesus Christ: "He is the only God ... and so am I, and so
are you." A telling phrase in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is "men forgot that All deities reside in
the human breast". This is very much in line with his belief in liberty and social equality in society
and between the sexes.

Enlightenment philosophy[edit]
Blake had a complex relationship with Enlightenment philosophy. Due to his visionary religious
beliefs, he opposed the Newtonian view of the universe. This mindset is reflected in an excerpt from
Blake's Jerusalem:

Blake's Newton (1795) demonstrates his opposition to the "single-vision" of scientific

materialism: Newton fixes his eye on a compass (recalling Proverbs 8:27, an important
passage for Milton)[98] to write upon a scroll that seems to project from his own head. [99]

I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe

And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire
Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace. (15.1420, E159)

Blake believed the paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which depict the naturalistic fall of light upon
objects, were products entirely of the "vegetative eye", and he saw Locke and Newton as "the true
progenitors of Sir Joshua Reynolds' aesthetic".[100] The popular taste in the England of that time for
such paintings was satisfied with mezzotints, prints produced by a process that created an image
from thousands of tiny dots upon the page. Blake saw an analogy between this and Newton's

particle theory of light.[101] Accordingly, Blake never used the technique, opting rather to develop a
method of engraving purely in fluid line, insisting that:
a Line or Lineament is not formed by Chance a Line is a Line in its Minutest Subdivision[s] Strait or
Crooked It is Itself & Not Intermeasurable with or by any Thing Else Such is Job. (E784)
It has been supposed that, despite his opposition to Enlightenment principles, Blake arrived at a
linear aesthetic that was in many ways more similar to the Neoclassical engravings of John
Flaxman than to the works of the Romantics, with whom he is often classified.[citation needed] However,
Blake's relationship with Flaxman seems to have grown more distant after Blake's return from
Felpham, and there are surviving letters between Flaxman and Hayley wherein Flaxman speaks ill
of Blake's theories of art.[102] Blake further criticized Flaxman's styles and theories of art in his
responses to criticism made against his print of Chaucer's Caunterbury Pilgrims in 1810.[103]

Assessment[edit]
Creative mindset[edit]
Northrop Frye, commenting on Blake's consistency in strongly held views, notes Blake "himself
says that his notes on [Joshua] Reynolds, written at fifty, are 'exactly Similar' to those on Locke and
Bacon, written when he was 'very Young'. Even phrases and lines of verse will reappear as much
as forty years later. Consistency in maintaining what he believed to be true was itself one of his
leading principles ... Consistency, then, foolish or otherwise, is one of Blake's chief preoccupations,
just as 'self-contradiction' is always one of his most contemptuous comments".[104]

Blake's "A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows", an illustration to J. G.

Stedman's Narrative, of a Five Years' Expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of
Surinam (1796).
Blake abhorred slavery and believed in racial and sexual equality. Several of his poems and
paintings express a notion of universal humanity: "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)". In

one poem, narrated by a black child, white and black bodies alike are described as shaded groves
or clouds, which exist only until one learns "to bear the beams of love":
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:
Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me. (23-8, E9)
Blake retained an active interest in social and political events throughout his life, and social and
political statements are often present in his mystical symbolism. His views on what he saw as
oppression and restriction of rightful freedom extended to the Church. His spiritual beliefs are
evident in Songs of Experience (1794), in which he distinguishes between the Old Testament God,
whose restrictions he rejected, and the New Testament God whom he saw as a positive influence.

Visions[edit]
From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen visions. The first may have occurred as
early as the age of four when, according to one anecdote, the young artist "saw God" when God
"put his head to the window", causing Blake to break into screaming.[105] At the age of eight or ten
in Peckham Rye, London, Blake claimed to have seen "a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings
bespangling every bough like stars."[105] According to Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he
returned home and reported the vision and only escaped being thrashed by his father for telling a
lie through the intervention of his mother. Though all evidence suggests that his parents were
largely supportive, his mother seems to have been especially so, and several of Blake's early
drawings and poems decorated the walls of her chamber. On another occasion, Blake watched
haymakers at work, and thought he saw angelic figures walking among them.[105]

The Ghost of a Flea, 18191820. Having informed painter-astrologer John Varley of his
visions of apparitions, Blake was subsequently persuaded to paint one of them. [106]Varley's
anecdote of Blake and his vision of the flea's ghost became well-known. [106]

Blake claimed to experience visions throughout his life. They were often associated with beautiful
religious themes and imagery, and may have inspired him further with spiritual works and pursuits.
Certainly, religious concepts and imagery figure centrally in Blake's works. God and Christianity
constituted the intellectual centre of his writings, from which he drew inspiration. Blake believed he
was personally instructed and encouraged by Archangels to create his artistic works, which he
claimed were actively read and enjoyed by the same Archangels. In a letter of condolence
to William Hayley, dated 6 May 1800, four days after the death of Hayley's son,[107] Blake wrote:
I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our
mortal part. Thirteen years ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the
spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the region of my imagination. I hear his advice, and even
now write from his dictate.
In a letter to John Flaxman, dated 21 September 1800, Blake wrote:
[The town of] Felpham is a sweet place for Study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven
opens here on all sides her golden Gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of
Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, & their forms more distinctly seen; & my Cottage is
also a Shadow of their houses. My Wife & Sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace... I
am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my Brain are studies &
Chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my
mortal life; & those works are the delight & Study of Archangels. (E710)
In a letter to Thomas Butts, dated 25 April 1803, Blake wrote:
Now I may say to you, what perhaps I should not dare to say to anyone else: That I can alone carry
on my visionary studies in London unannoy'd, & that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See
Visions, Dream Dreams & prophecy & speak Parables unobserv'd & at liberty from the Doubts of
other Mortals; perhaps Doubts proceeding from Kindness, but Doubts are always pernicious,
Especially when we Doubt our Friends.
In A Vision of the Last Judgement Blake wrote:
Error is Created Truth is Eternal Error or Creation will be Burned Up & then & not till then Truth or
Eternity will appear It is Burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it I assert for My self that I do
not behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance & not Action it is as the Dirt upon my
feet No part of Me. What it will be Questiond When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire
somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy
Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I
would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look thro it & not with it. (E565-6)
Aware of Blake's visions, William Wordsworth commented, "There was no doubt that this poor man
was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the
sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott."[108] In a more deferential vein, writing in A Short Biographical
Dictionary of English Literature, John William Cousins wrote that Blake was "a truly pious and loving
soul, neglected and misunderstood by the world, but appreciated by an elect few", who "led a
cheerful and contented life of poverty illumined by visions and celestial inspirations".[109] Blake's
sanity was called into question as recently as the publication of the 1911 Encyclopdia Britannica,
whose entry on Blake comments that "the question whether Blake was or was not mad seems likely
to remain in dispute, but there can be no doubt whatever that he was at different periods of his life
under the influence of illusions for which there are no outward facts to account, and that much of
what he wrote is so far wanting in the quality of sanity as to be without a logical coherence".

Cultural influence[edit]
Main article: William Blake in popular culture

William Blake's portrait in profile, by John Linnell. This larger version was painted to be
engraved as the frontispiece of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of Blake (1863).
Blake's work was neglected for a generation after his death and almost forgotten when Alexander
Gilchrist began work on his biography in the 1860s. The publication of the Life of William
Blake rapidly transformed Blake's reputation, in particular as he was taken up by PreRaphaelites and associated figures, in particular Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles
Swinburne. In the twentieth century, however, Blake's work was fully appreciated and his influence
increased. Important early and mid twentieth-century scholars involved in enhancing Blake's
standing in literary and artistic circles included S. Foster Damon, Geoffrey Keynes, Northrop
Frye, David V. Erdman and G. E. Bentley, Jr.
While Blake had a significant role to play in the art and poetry of figures such as Rossetti, it was
during the Modernist period that this work began to influence a wider set of writers and
artists. William Butler Yeats, who edited an edition of Blake's collected works in 1893, drew on him
for poetic and philosophical ideas,[110] while British surrealist art in particular drew on Blake's
conceptions of non-mimetic, visionary practice in the painting of artists such as Paul
Nash and Graham Sutherland.[111] His poetry came into use by a number of British classical
composers such as Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who set his works. Modern
British composer John Tavener set several of Blake's poems, including The Lamb (as the 1982
work "The Lamb") and The Tyger.
Many such as June Singer have argued that Blake's thoughts on human nature greatly anticipate
and parallel the thinking of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. In Jung's own words: "Blake [is] a
tantalizing study, since he compiled a lot of half or undigested knowledge in his fantasies.
According to my ideas they are an artistic production rather than an authentic representation of
unconscious processes."[112][113] Similarly, although less popularly, Diana Hume George claimed that
Blake can be seen as a precursor to the ideas of Sigmund Freud.[114]
Blake had an enormous influence on the beat poets of the 1950s and the counterculture of the
1960s, frequently being cited by such seminal figures as beat poet Allen Ginsberg, songwriters Bob
Dylan, Jim Morrison,[115] Van Morrison,[116][117] and English writer Aldous Huxley. Much of the
central conceit of Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials is rooted in the world of
Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. After World War II, Blake's role in popular culture came to

the fore in a variety of areas such as popular music, film, and the graphic novel, leading Edward
Larrissy to assert that "Blake is the Romantic writer who has exerted the most powerful influence on
the twentieth century."[118]

Exhibitions[edit]

Memorial marking Blake's birthplace in Soho, City of Westminster.

Major recent exhibitions focusing on William Blake include:

The Ashmolean Museum's (Oxford) exhibition William Blake: Apprentice and Master, open
from December 2014 until March 2015, examined William Blake's formation as an artist, as
well as his influence on young artist-printmakers who gathered around him in the last years of
his life.[119]

The National Gallery of Victoria's exhibition William Blake in summer 2014 showcased the
Gallery's collection of works by William Blake which includes spectacular watercolours, single
prints and illustrated books.[120]

The Morgan Library & Museum exhibition William Blake's World: "A New Heaven Is Begun",
open from September 2009 until January 2010, included more than 100 watercolours, prints,
and illuminated books of poetry.[121]

An exhibition at Tate in 20072008, William Blake, coincided with the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of William Blake's birth and included Blake works from the Gallery's permanent
collection, but also private loans of recently discovered works which had never before been
exhibited.[122]

The Scottish National Gallery 2007 exhibition William Blake coincided with the two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary of William Blake's birth and featured all of the Gallery's works
associated with Blake.[123]

An exhibition at Tate in 20002001, William Blake, displayed the full range of William Blakes
art and poetry, together with contextual materials, and is arranged in four sections: One of the
Gothic Artists; The Furnace of Lambeths Vale; Chambers of the Imagination; Many
Formidable Works.[124]

Bibliography[edit]
Illuminatedbooks[edit]

SongsofInnocenceandofExperience(edited1794)

SongsofInnocence(edited1789)

TheBookofThel*(written17881790,edited17891793)

TheMarriageofHeavenandHell(written17901793)

VisionsoftheDaughtersofAlbion*(edited1793)

Continentalprophecies*

AmericaaProphecy(edited1793)

EuropeaProphecy(edited17941821)

TheSongofLos(edited1795)

ThereisNoNaturalReligion(written1788,possibleedited17941795)

TheFirstBookofUrizen*(edited17941818)

AllReligionsareOne(written1788,possibleedited1795)

TheBookofLos*(edited1795)

TheBookofAhania*(edited1795)

Milton*(written18041810)

JerusalemTheEmanationoftheGiantAlbion*(written18041820additionsevenlater,edited18201827a

Nonilluminated[edit]

PoeticalSketches(written17691777,edited1783and1868asavolume)

AnIslandintheMoon(written1784,unfinished)

TheFrenchRevolution(edited1791)

ASongofLiberty(edited1792)

TheFourZoas*(written17971807,unfinished)

Tiriel*(writtenc.1789,edited1874)

Theworkswith*constitutethepropheticbooks.