William Blake

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. He was born in London and died there.

William Blake
Blake in a portrait by Thomas Phillips (1807)
Born	(1757-11-28)28 November 1757 Soho, London, England
Died	12 August 1827(1827-08-12) (aged 69) Charing Cross, London, England
Occupation	Poet, painter, printmaker
Genre	Visionary, poetry
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable works	Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Four Zoas, Jerusalem, Milton, "And did those feet in ancient time"
Spouse	Catherine Boucher (m. 1782)
Signature

During his lifetime he was not very well known. Today Blake's work is thought to be important in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was printed around 1783. His most famous poem "And did those feet in ancient time" was, over 100 years later, put to music by Hubert Parry. The hymn is called "Jerusalem".

Blake was voted 38th in a poll of the 100 Greatest Britons organised by the BBC in 2002.

Books about Blake

• Peter Abbs (July 2014). "William Blake and the forging of the creative self". The London Magazine: 49–62.
• Peter Ackroyd (1995). Blake. Sinclair-Stevenson. ISBN 1-85619-278-4.
• Donald Ault (1974). Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton. University of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-03225-6.
•  ———  (1987). Narrative Unbound: Re-Visioning William Blake's The Four Zoas. Station Hill Press. ISBN 1-886449-75-9.
• Stephen C. Behrendt (1992). Reading William Blake. London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 0-312-06835-2 .
• G.E. Bentley (2001). The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of William Blake. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08939-2.
•  ———  (2006). Blake Records. Second edition. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09685-2.
•  ———  (1977). Blake Books. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-818151-5.
•  ———  (1995). Blake Books Supplement. Clarendon Press.
• Harold Bloom (1963). Blake's Apocalypse. Doubleday.
• Jacob Bronowski (1972). William Blake and the Age of Revolution. Routledge & K. Paul. ISBN 0-7100-7277-5 (hardback), ISBN 0-7100-7278-3 (pbk.)
•  ———  (1944). William Blake, 1757–1827. A man without a mask. Secker and Warburg, London. Reprints: Penguin 1954; Haskell House 1967.
• Helen P. Bruder (1997). William Blake and the Daughters of Albion. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, and New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-333-64036-5.
• G. K. Chesterton, William Blake. Duckworth, London, n.d. [1910]. Reprint: House of Stratus, Cornwall, 2008. ISBN 0-7551-0032-8.
• Steve Clark and David Worrall, eds (2006). Blake, Nation and Empire. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, and New York: St. Martin's Press.
• Tristanne J. Connolly (2002). William Blake and the Body. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• S. Foster Damon (1979). A Blake Dictionary. Revised edition. University of New England. ISBN 0-87451-436-3.
• Michael Davis (1977) William Blake. A new kind of man. University of California, Berkeley.
• Morris Eaves (1992). The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-2489-5.
• 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.
•  ———  (1988). The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake. Anchor. ISBN 0-385-15213-2.
• R. N. Essick (1980). William Blake: Printmaker. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03954-2.
•  ———  (1989). William Blake and the Language of Adam. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-812985-8.
• R. N. Essick & D. Pearce, eds. (1978). Blake in his time. Indiana University Press.
• Michael Ferber, The Social Vision of William Blake. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1985.
• Irving Fiske (1951). Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake. London: The Shaw Society [19-page pamphlet].
• Northrop Frye (1947). Fearful Symmetry. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-06165-3.
•  ———  ed. (1966). Blake. A collection of critical essays. Prentice-Hall.
• Alexander Gilchrist, Life and Works of William Blake, (2d ed., London, 1880). Reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-108-01369-7.
• Jean H. Hagstrom, William Blake. Poet and Painter. An introduction to the illuminated verse, University of Chicago, 1964.
• James King (1991). William Blake: His Life. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-07572-3.
• Saree Makdisi (2003). William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s. University of Chicago Press.
• Benjamin Heath Malkin (1806). A Father's Memoirs of his Child Longsmans, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster Row, London. {See : : Arthur Symons, William Blake (1907, 1970) at 307–329.}
• Peter Marshall (1988). William Blake: Visionary Anarchist. Freedom Press. ISBN 0-900384-77-8
• Emma Mason, "Elihu's Spiritual Sensation: William Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job," in Michael Lieb, Emma Mason and Jonathan Roberts (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible (Oxford, OUP, 2011), 460–475.
• W. J. T. Mitchell (1978). Blake's Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-691-01402-7.
• Joseph Natoli (1982, 2016) Twentieth-Century Blake Criticism: Northrop Frye to the Present. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-1389-3914-1.
• Victor N. Paananen (1996). William Blake. New York: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7053-4.
• Laura Quinney (2010). William Blake on Self and Soul. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-03524-9.
• Kathleen Raine (1970). William Blake. Oxford University.
• George Anthony Rosso Jr. (1993). Blake's Prophetic Workshop: A Study of The Four Zoas. Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8387-5240-3.
• Gholam Reza Sabri-Tabrizi (1973). The 'Heaven' and 'Hell' of William Blake. New York: International Publishers.
• Mark Schorer (1946). William Blake: The Politics of Vision. New York: H. Holt and Co.
• Basil de Sélincourt (1909). William Blake. London:Duckworth and co..
• June Singer, The Unholy Bible: Blake, Jung, and the Collective Unconscious (New York: Putnam 1970). Reprinted as: Blake, Jung, and the Collective Unconscious (Nicolas-Hays 1986).
• Sheila A. Spector (2001). Wonders Divine: the Development of Blake's Kabbalistic Myth. Bucknell Univ. Pr. ISBN 978-0838754689
• Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Blake: A Critical Essay. John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, London, 2d. ed., 1868.
• Arthur Symons, William Blake. A. Constable, London 1907. Reprint: Cooper Square, New York 1970. {Includes documents of contemporaries about Wm. Blake, at 249–433.}
• E. P. Thompson (1993). Witness Against the Beast Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-22515-9.
• Joseph Viscomi (1993). Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton University Press). ISBN 0-691-06962-X.
• David Weir (2003). Brahma in the West: William Blake and the Oriental Renaissance (SUNY Press).
• Mona Wilson (1927). The Life of William Blake (London: The Nonesuch Press)
• Roger Whitson and Jason Whittaker (2012). William Blake and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration, Participation, and Social Media (London: Routledge) ISBN 978-0415-6561-84
• Jason Whittaker (1999). William Blake and the Myths of Britain (London: Macmillan).
• W. B. Yeats (1903). Ideas of Good and Evil (London and Dublin: A. H. Bullen). {Two essays on Blake at 168–175, 176–225}.
• A Comparative Study of Three Anti-Slavery Poems Written by William Blake, Hannah More and Marcus Garvey: Black Stereotyping by Jérémie Kroubo Dagnini for GRAAT On-Line, January 2010.
• W. M. Rossetti, ed., Poetical Works of William Blake, (London, 1874)
• A. G. B. Russell (1912). Engravings of William Blake.
• Blake, William, William Blake's Works in Conventional Typography, edited by G. E. Bentley, Jr., 1984. Facsimile ed., Scholars' : Facsimiles & Reprints, ISBN 978-0-8201-1388-3.

Other websites

• Recent Discovery of the Location of William Blake's Grave. Archived 2010-02-23 at the Wayback Machine
• The William Blake Archive, a multi-media archive, sponsored by the Library of Congress
• Works by William Blake at Project Gutenberg
• Blake250: 2007 London festival celebrating 250 years of William Blake's influence Archived 2007-03-11 at the Wayback Machine
• Paintings of William Blake Archived 2006-07-18 at the Wayback Machine
• William Blake Society Archived 2018-06-30 at the Wayback Machine
• Friends of William Blake Archived 2015-08-28 at the Wayback Machine
• Blake Society
• Making facsimiles of Blake's prints
• William Blake at the British Library

Profiles

• Profile at the Academy of American Poets
• Profile at the Poetry Foundation
• William Blake profile, video on BBC Poetry Season and BBC etching gallery
• Tate William Blake learning resource
• Profile at Jacob Boehme Online

Archives

• The William Blake Archive – A Comprehensive Academic Archive of Blake's works with scans from multiple collections
• Single Institution Holdings:

• The G.E. Bentley: William Blake Collection Special Collections | Victoria University Library in the University of Toronto
• The G.E. Bentley: William Blake Collection Digital Collections | Victoria University Library in the University of Toronto
• William Blake collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Links to articles, manuscripts and films relating to William Blake. From the British Library's Discovering Literature website.
• William Blake Digital Material From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress

Digital editions and research

• Works by William Blake at Project Gutenberg
• Works by William Blake at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Settings of William Blake's poetry in the Choral Public Domain Library
• William Blake's America and Europe at Auckland Libraries