William Blake

Born in London in 1757, William Blake trained as an engraver and built a career that joined writing and visual art in an unusual way. He often wrote, illustrated, and printed his own books, treating poem and image as parts of a single work.

Blake is now known as one of the great figures of English literature and art, though he was not widely celebrated in his lifetime. His best-known works include Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, all shaped by his intense religious imagination, sympathy for the oppressed, and distrust of dull convention.

He died in 1827, but his reputation kept growing after his death. Today he is admired not only for famous poems like "The Tyger" and "London," but also for the fearless originality that made his work unlike anyone else’s.