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 William Blake

 English poet, engraver, and painter 

Early life

  Born on November 28, 1757 in London, England

  Third of five children of Catherine and James Blake - a London

haberdasher.  James Blake could only afford to give his son enough schooling to learn

the basics of reading and writing.

Education

   At the age of 10, Blake attended Henry Pars’ drawing class. 

  He later studied at the school of the Royal Academy of Arts

   At age 14, he began a seven-year apprenticeship to a well-known engraver, James Basire. One of 

Blake's assignments as an apprentice was to sketch the tombs at Westminster Abbey, exposing him to a

 variety of Gothic styles from which he would draw inspiration throughout his career.

Marriage

   At 24, he married Catherine Boucher, an illiterate and daughter of a market gardener. He taught her toread and write, and assist him in his engraving. She had an unswerving faith in her husband’s vision;

the couple had no children.

Career

  In 1800, Blake, under the patronage of William Haley (a wealthy poetaster) moved to a cottage at

Felpham, on the Sussex seacoast. With good intentions Hayley tried to cure Blake of his unprofitable

enthusiasm. Blake rebelled against this criticism and rejected Hayley's help.

  He saw Haley as the enemy of his spiritual life while he pretends to be the friend of his corporeal. Blake

moved back to London to follow his ―divine vision.‖ 

Style

  He turned back to the Elizabethan and early 17th century poets, to the Ossianic poems (relating to, orreminiscent of Ossian, a legendary Irish hero and bard of the 3rd century A.D.), and other 18th century 

 writers.

  He experimented with partial rhymes and novel rhythms

  He introduced a new mode of publication for his later works – engraving both text and its correlated

pictorial design on a copper plate, striking off with the impression of paper, and then coloring the page

 with water paints by hand.

The Artist

  Blake, had prophetic visions – First, he claimed that had a vision of the prophet Ezekiel, second, he

claimed that God was watching over him through a window, and third, he claimed that he saw a tree

full of angels.

  Other poets including Blake’s younger contemporary, Shelly, have had visions and woven them intotheir poems. But his visions were not hallucinations, because he remained clearly aware of the

distinctions between them and perception through his ―Corporeal or Vegetative Eye.‖  

  His works deal with some aspect of the Biblical pattern of the fall of man, salvation, the apocalyptic

destruction of the fallen worlds and the restoration of the New Jerusalem, the city of Good; and all are

presented in a visionary form – these works were modeled from the Book of Revelation.

 Poetical Sketches 

  Blake’s first book of poems, printed when he was 26 years old.

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  Demonstrated his dissatisfaction with the neoclassical tradition and his pursuit/search for new poetic

forms and techniques.  Songs of Innocence (1789) 

  These poems were simple lucid poems written to and about children.  Songs of Experience (1794) 

  The poems exhibited the ugly and terrifying fallen world of poverty, disease, prostitution, and (what to

Blake was the root of all evil) moral and institutional repression.

  ―I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.‖ 

The French Revolution and America, a Prophecy

  Blake had become a political sympathizer with the American and French Revolutions.

  He viewed political revolution as the violence predicted in the Book of Revelation. 

The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem

  Blake presented the pattern of biblical history as a symbolic outer correlative of the inner state of 

human soul, in which the fall comes about through a splintering or disintegration of the unitary spiritinto self-sufficing parts, salvation is to achieved through the faculty of imagination (the divine agency 

in man), and the apocalypse is attendant upon the triumphant reintegration of the total man.

  He composed The Four Zoas as a mystical story predicting the future showing how evil is rooted in

man's basic faculties—reason, passion, instinct, and imagination.

Blake’s 60’s 

  He gave up poetry to devote himself to his work as a pictorial artist. 

  He produces hundreds of paintings and engravings, many of them were illustrations for other poets’

 works, including a representation of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, set of designs for the Book of Job,

and illustrations of Dante. 

Death

  Died on August 12, 1827 in London, England (70 years old)   Blake’s old age was serene, free from the irascibility with which he has earlier responded to the

shallowness and blindness of English public.

   When Blake died, he was but little known as an artist, and almost entirely unknown as a poet, but in

the mid-19th century, he acquired a group of admirers among the Pre-Raphaelites.

Source: ― William Blake Biography.‖ Encyclopedia Of World Biography. Avameg, Inc., n.d. Web. 15 June 2012.

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ve-Br/Blake-William.html#b.