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William Blake
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Born in London in 1757, William Blake's thinking was much influenced by the French Revolution, which was generally regarded as a sign of the dawning of a new age in Europe. Blake saw himself primarily as a prophet, for whom art was a way of bringing about a change in mankind and thereby in society. Blake's themes ranged from social injustices and lack of love to spiritual emptiness – problems which are now, over 200 years later, still as topical and universal as they were then. For Blake, true divinity comes from human nature, when it awakens to the reality of its visionary powers: Imagination or the Divine Body in Every Man.
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William Blake was a transitional figure in British literature. He was the one of the first writers of the "Romantic Period." Before this period, most writers, such as Alexander Pope, wrote more for form instead of for content. Blake, on the other hand, turned back to Elizabethan and early seventeenth-century poets, and other eighteenth- century poets outside the tradition of Pope.
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William Blake, a visionary English poet and painter who was a precursor of English Romanticism, combined the vocations of engraver, painter, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757, the son of a London hosier. Blake spent all of his relatively quiet life in London except for a stay at Felpham, on the southern coast of England, from 1800 to 1803. Largely self-taught, Blake was... widely read, and his poetry shows the influence of the German mystic Jakob Boehme, for example, and of Swedenborgianism. As a child, Blake wanted to become a painter. He was sent to drawing school at age 10 and at the age of 14 was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver.
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From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen visions. The earliest instance occurred at the age of about eight or ten in Peckham Rye, London, when he reported seeing a tree filled with angels "bespangling every bough like stars." According to Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he returned home to report his vision, but only escaped being thrashed by his father through the intervention of his mother. Though all the evidence suggests that his parents were largely supportive, his mother seems to have been especially so, and several of Blake's early drawings and poems decorated the walls of her chamber. On another occasion, Blake watched haymakers at work, and thought he saw angelic figures walking among them. In later life, his wife Catherine would recall the time he saw God's head "put to the window". The vision, Catherine reminded her husband, "Set you ascreaming."[34]
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A religious visionary and mystic, William Blake was acknowledged, after the fact, as one of the first leading figures of the Romantic movement. In his lifetime... he was viewed as an eccentric, at best. Blake began having visions of angels and prophets as a child; he was also writing poetry by age 12 and teaching himself art by studying the Renaissance masters. At 15, he started an apprenticeship in engraving; seven years later, in 1779, he started studying art at London's Royal Academy, despite his contempt for the loathing the academy's president, Joshua Reynolds. In 1784, Blake opened his printing shop, and started publishing his own works using a method of "illuminated printing." This method involved an initial monochrome printing of both text and illustration, after which Blake or his wife would apply watercolor to the pages by hand.
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William Blake was born in London, where he spent most of his life. His father was a successful London hosier and attracted by the doctrines of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Blake was first educated at home, chiefly by his mother. His parents encouraged him to collect prints of the Italian masters, and in 1767 sent him to Henry Pars' drawing school. From his early years, he experienced visions of angels and ghostly monks, he saw and conversed with the angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and various historical figures. These memories never left him and influenced his poetry throughout his life
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William Blake