Profile of William Blake on Famous Like Me

William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 21, 1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker.

Early Life

Blake was born at 28 Broad Street, Golden Square, London into a middle-class family. At ten years old, he began engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities, a practice that was then preferred to real-life drawing. Four years later he became apprenticed to an engraver, James Basire. After two years Basire sent him to copy art from the Gothic churches in London. At the age of twenty-one Blake finished his apprenticeship and set up as a professional engraver.

In 1779, he became a student at the Royal Academy, where he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens. He preferred the Classical exactness of Michelangelo and Raphael. In July, 1780, he was at the head of a rampaging mob that stormed Newgate Prison in London. The mob were wearing blue cockades (ribbons) on their caps, to symbolise solidarity with the insurrection in the American colonies. This disturbance, later known as the Gordon riots, provoked a flurry of paranoid legislation from the government of George III, as well as the creation of the first police force.

In 1782 Blake met John Flaxman, who was to become his patron. In the same year he married a poor, illiterate girl named Catherine Boucher, who was five years his junior. Catherine signed her wedding contract with an X. Blake taught her to read and write and even trained her as an engraver. At that time, George Cumberland, one of the founders of the National Gallery, became an admirer of Blake's work.

Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was published circa 1783. After his father's death, William and brother Robert opened a print shop in 1784 and began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson. At Johnson's house he met some of the leading intellectual dissidents of the time in England, including Joseph Priestley, scientist; Richard Price, philosopher; John Henry Fuseli, painter whom he became friends with; Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist; and Thomas Paine, American revolutionary. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had great hopes for the American and French revolution and wore a red liberty cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in the French revolution.

Mary Wollstonecraft became a close friend, and Blake illustrated her Original Stories from Real Life (1788). They shared similar views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage. In the Visions of the Daughters of Albion in 1793 Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfillment. In 1788, at the age of thirty-one, Blake began to experiment with relief etching, which was the method used to produce most of his books of poems. The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and final 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 in order to dissolve away the untreated copper and leave the design standing. The pages printed from these plates then had to be hand-colored in water colors and stitched together to make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for four of his works: the Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem.

Later Life and Career

Blake's marriage to Catherine remained a close and devoted one until his death. There were early problems, however, such as Catherine's illiteracy and the couple's failure to produce children. At one point, in accordance with the beliefs of the Swedenborgian Society, Blake suggested bringing in a concubine. Catherine was distressed at the idea, and he dropped it. Later in his life Blake sold a great number of works, particularly his Bible illustrations, to Thomas Butts, a patron who saw Blake more as a friend in need than an artist. About 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 mediocre poet. It was in this cottage that Blake wrote Milton: a Poem (which was published later between 1804 and 1808).

Slavery was abhorred by Blake, who believed in racial and sexual equality, with several of his poems and paintings expressing a notion of universal humanity: "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)". He retained an active interest in social and political events for all his life, but was often forced to resorting to cloaking social idealism and political statements in protestant mystical allegory. Blake rejected all forms of imposed authority, indeed was charged with assault and uttering seditious and treasonable expressions against the King in 1803, but was cleared in the Chichester assizes of the charges. Blake's views on what he saw as oppression and restriction of rightful freedom extended to the Church. Blake was himself a follower of Unitarian philosophy. This was continued in the publication of his Songs of Experience (in 1794), in which Blake showed his own distinction between the Old Testament God, whose restrictions he rejected, and the New Testament God (Jesus Christ), who he saw as a positive influence.

Blake returned to London in 1802 and began to write and illustrate Jerusalem (1804-1820). He was introduced by George Cumberland to a young artist named John Linnell. Through Linnell he met Samuel Palmer, who belonged to a group of artists who called themselves the Shoreham Ancients. This group shared Blake's rejection of modern trends and his belief in a spiritual and artistic New Age. At the age of sixty-five Blake began work on illustrations for the Book of Job. These works were later admired by John Ruskin, who compared Blake favourably to Rembrandt. William Blake died in 1827 and was buried in an unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields, London. In recent years, a proper memorial was erected for him and his wife. Perhaps his life is summed up by his statement that "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself." Blake is also recognized as a Saint in Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in his honor in Australia in 1949.

Bibliography

Illuminated 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: Visions of the Daughters of Albion
  • America: a Prophecy
• 1794: Europe: a Prophecy
  • The First Book of Urizen
  • Songs of Experience (The sequel to Songs of Innocence, with many of its poems intended as counterpoints from the Fallen world to those in the first book, this was Blake's only Illuminated book to achieve even limited success in his lifetime. It includes the poems The Tyger and The Sick Rose)
• 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 Material

• Never seek to tell thy love

Illustrated by Blake

• 1788: 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
• 1825-1827: Dante, The Divine Comedy (Blake died in 1827 with these watercolours still unfinished)

On Blake

• Jacob Bronowski (1972). William Blake and the Age of Revolution. Routledge and K. Paul. ISBN 0-710-07277-5 (hardcover) ISBN 0-710-07278-3 (pbk.)
• Jacob Bronowski (1967). William Blake, 1757-1827; a man without a mask. Haskell House Publishers.
• S. Foster Damon (1979). A Blake Dictionary. Shambhala. ISBN 0-394-73688-5.
• Northrop Frye (1947). Fearful Symmetry. Princeton Univ Press. ISBN 0-691-06165-3.
• Peter Ackroyd (1995). Blake. Sinclair-Stevenson. ISBN 1-85619-278-4.
• E.P. Thompson (1993). Witness against the Beast. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22515-9.
• Victor N. Paananen (1996). William Blake. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7053-4.
• George Anthony Rosso Jr. (1993). Blake's Prophetic Workshop: A Study of The Four Zoas. Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8387-5240-3.
• G.E. Bentley Jr. (2001). The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of William Blake. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08939-2.
• David V. Erdman (1977). Blake: Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His Own Times. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-486-26719-9.
• James King (1991). William Blake: His Life. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-07572-3.
• W.J.T. Mitchell (1978). Blake's Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-691-01402-7.
• Peter Marshall (1988). William Blake: Visionary Anarchist ISBN 090038477
• Dr. Malkin, A Father's Memories of his Child, (1806)
• Gilchrist, Life and Works of William Blake, (second edition, London, 1880)
• Swinburne, William Blake: A Critical Essay, (London, 1868)
• W. M. Rosetti (editor), Poetical Works of William Blake, (London, 1874)
• Selincourt, William Blake, (London, 1909)
• A. G. B. Russell, Engravings of William Blake, (1912)
• W. B. Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil, (1903), contains essays.

Inspired by Blake

• Tyger, an album by electronic music artists Tangerine Dream, features a number of William Blake poems set to music.
• Tiger (ca. 1928), a tone-cluster piano piece by Henry Cowell
• Red Dragon, a novel by Thomas Harris, whose title refers to Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, the original of which is eaten by the novel's antihero.
• The 1981 film The Evil Dead, directed by Sam Raimi, also contains Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, this time as a page in the Book of the Dead.
• Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an album by the Norwegian musical group Ulver from 1998, utilizes the complete text of the Blake poem lyrically.
• The Songs of Innocence and Experience have been set to music by Ralph Vaughan-Williams, and more recently by William Bolcom. Albums using them as lyrics include Greg Brown's "Songs of Innocence and Experience" and Jah Wobble's "The Inspiration of William Blake". Allen Ginsberg also released an album of Blake songs.
• A series of poems and texts chosen by Peter Pears from Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, Auguries of Innocence, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was made into the song cycle, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, by Benjamin Britten in 1965.
• The Sick Rose from Songs of Experience is one of the poems by several authors set to music by Benjamin Britten in Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.
• Spring, by Finn Coren
• The World of Tiers books by Philip José Farmer
• Quotations from Blake form the climax of Jerry Springer - The Opera
• Dead Man, a film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, features a character named William Blake and includes many references to Blake's work.
• Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!, a novel by Kenzaburo Oe
• Love's Secret Domain, an electronic album by Coil, quotes Blake numerous times in the lyrics. The title track is also a reinterpretation of The Sick Rose. Various other albums by Coil carry many Blake references and allusions.
• The book The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley draws its title from a line in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The title of Huxley's book, in turn, inspired the naming of the rock band The Doors who turned Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"(106-108) into their "End of the Night".
• The Amber Spyglass, the third book from the collection His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman, has several quotations from Blake's works.
• The Chemical Wedding album by Bruce Dickinson.
• Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, album by David Axelrod
• The character Blake Williams in the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson is named after William Blake.
• William Blake is the secondary identity of the character Taleswapper in the Tales of Alvin Maker fantasy book series by Orson Scott Card.
• Grendel, by John Gardner, quotes a verse from Blake's "The Mental Traveller" before the book begins. It also has many references to Blake throughout the novel.

References

• This article incorporates text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
• William Blake: Visionary Anarchist Peter Marshall (1988) ISBN 090038477

External Links

• William Blake - Cybersongs of Innocence
• The William Blake Archive
• http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/blake/ (archive of an exhibit of his work at the National Gallery of Victoria)
• http://www.elp.it/bygothic/Gallery/Blake/index.html - Gallery of Paintings
• Works by William Blake at Project Gutenberg
• Blake Digital Text Project
• Introduction to The Drawings and Engravings of William Blake, by Laurence Binyon
• Essay on Blake’s Auguries of Innocence
• Blue Neon Alley - Directory and Poems

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