William Blake Biography

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 both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God",[4] or "Human existence itself".
Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake 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 both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - indeed, to all forms of organised religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.
Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."

 

Bibliography

 

lluminated books

c.1788: All Religions are One
There is No Natural Religion
1789: Songs of Innocence
The Book of Thel
1790–1793: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
1793-1795: Continental prophecies
1793: Visions of the Daughters of Albion
America a Prophecy
1794: Europe a Prophecy
The First Book of Urizen
Songs of Experience
1795: The Book of Los
The Song of Los
The Book of Ahania
c.1804–c.1811: Milton a Poem
1804–1820: Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion

Non-illuminated

1783: Poetical Sketches
1784-5: An Island in the Moon
1789: Tiriel
1791: The French Revolution
1797: The Four Zoas

Illustrated by Blake

1791: Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life
1797: Edward Young, Night Thoughts
1805-1808: Robert Blair, The Grave
1808: John Milton, Paradise Lost
1819-1820: John Varley, Visionary Heads
1821: R.J. Thornton, Virgil
1823-1826: The Book of Job
1824-1827: John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Not finished)
1825-1827: Dante, The Divine Comedy (Blake died in 1827 with work on these illustrations still unfinished. Of the 102 watercolours, 7 had been selected for engraving)