William Blake (1757-1827) was born on November 28 in London. He was the third son of
James Blake, a prosperous hosier.
Blake had his first "vision" when he was four years old and continued to experience visions throughout his childhood. He did not attend school but was taught to read and write by his father. When he showed a talent for drawing at age 10, he was given formal training in art and was later apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver to the Society of Antiquaries. He married Catherine Boucher in 1782.
In 1783, he published his earliest compositions, Poetical Sketches. He set up a printseller's shop in 1784. He also wrote a manuscript of An Island in the Moon, a satire-fantasy during this year. The manuscript contained the earliest of Songs of Innocence("The Lamb"). Blake's dead brother appears to him in a vision and gives him the secret of illuminated printing which he used to engrave several of his publications including Songs of Innocence in 1789. He engraves Songs of Experience in 1794.
Blake was never able to make money as an engraver because the art of engraving was losing ground to other art forms. His creative handling of assignments also alienated his clients who were unable to appreciate his work. His failure drove him to lifelong warfare with the "external world". He fell in with a band of intellectual revolutionaries and became a spokesman for them. He decried men for their meekness and pleaded with them to cast of forever through faith and daring their "mind forged manacles". As a result of his actions, he condemned himself to a life of poverty; yet his failure provided him with leisure time to write and engrave his "visions" of truth.
His Poetry:
Blake was a man of vision who claimed to have experienced states of mental illumination in which he beheld ultimate truth. The region of his vision was the region of the human mind, which for him became the region of Eternal worlds. To report the wonders of the magical unchartered region, Blake rejected tradition ("I will not reason and compare: my business is to create".) and substituted a confusing and complicated symbolical framework. In his poetry, he appeals to his audience for a renewal, through vision of faith in human integrity. Vision is for him the great secret of life. The whole of his work is an attempt to develop this faculty of vision that men may see to understand, and understanding, may forgive and act rightly.