William Blake

Born in London on November 28, 1757, William Blake trained as an engraver and spent his life working as both a writer and visual artist. He was not widely celebrated while he was alive, but later generations came to see him as one of the great imaginative figures of the Romantic age.

Blake wrote lyric poems that are often clear and musical on the surface, yet charged with bold ideas about innocence, experience, religion, power, and freedom. His best-known books include Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), while his longer prophetic works showed an even more intense and personal vision.

He also developed a distinctive way of combining text and image through illuminated printing, making many of his books artworks as well as poems. Blake died in London on August 12, 1827, and his reputation has only grown since then, with readers and artists continuing to return to the strange beauty, energy, and conviction of his work.