William Blake

Born in London on November 28, 1757, William Blake trained as an engraver and spent much of his life working between art and poetry. He wrote and illustrated his books himself, often using relief etching and hand-coloring to produce pages where text and image belong together.

During his lifetime, Blake was often seen as eccentric and was not widely recognized, but later generations came to view him as one of the defining figures of English Romanticism. His work ranges from brief, memorable lyrics to large prophetic books, and it returns again and again to innocence and experience, imagination, faith, freedom, and the pressures of society.

Blake died on August 12, 1827. Today he is remembered not only for famous poems such as "The Lamb," "The Tyger," and "London," but also for the unusual way he joined poetry, painting, and printmaking into a single artistic vision.