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William Blake (1757-1827)

http://www.blakearchive.org/

This link will connect you to the William Blake archive sponsored by the Library of Congress in conjunction with the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, and other groups. Here you will find an extensive library of online illuminated manuscripts, bibliographies, and links to other Blake sites.

http://www.english.uga.edu/~wblake/

This link will connect you to the Blake Digital Text Project at the University of Georgia, which contains several online versions of Blake's primary manuscripts as well as bibliographic and critical works on Blake's writing.

BIOGRAPHY

The son of a London hosier, William Blake was home-schooled due in part to his tendency even in childhood toward visionary experience. Not just a visionary, however, Blake showed early talent for the visual arts. After attending drawing school, apprenticed to an engraver for seven years after which he briefly attended the Royal Academy. In 1782, Blake married Catherine Boucher and, after teaching her to read and write, she assisted Blake with the illustrations for his poetic manuscripts. Blake's first published volume Poetical Sketches (1783) took a stance of protest against King George III and his policies toward the American colonies. As an independent-minded thinker, Blake also criticized the institutions of rational science, the Church, and State in Songs of Innocence (1789) and the Songs of Experience (1794). Blake's famous nonconformist slogan, "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's" reflected his philosophical resistance to neo-classical rationalism with its roots in the democratic thinking of such political philosophers as Thomas Paine, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft. In the 1790s Blake's long poems engage imaginatively with the revolutionary contexts of his age as in "The French Revolution" (1791), "America, a Prophecy" (1793). And "Europe a Prophecy" (1791). Theological parody and critique of religious orthodoxy and utilitarian thought characterize works from this decade including "The Book of Urizen" (1794) and "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (1790-93). In addition to his income from professional engraving, Blake also received the patronage of William Hayley, which allowed him to move to Felpham where he learned classical languages and Hebrew and cultivated the kind of visionary mysticism that informs his major epics: Milton (1804-08), Vala, or The Four Zoas (1797, 1800), and Jerusalem (1804-20). Although reduced to poverty in later life, Blake mentored a new generation of artists including John Linnell who commissioned Blake's last work, illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, which Blake worked on until he passed away in 1827.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Clark, S. H. and David Worrall, Eds. Blake in the Nineties. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Hamlyn, Robin and Michael Phillips. William Blake. London: Tate Gallery, 2000.

Hobson, Christopher Z. Blake and Homosexuality. New York : Palgrave, 2000.

Lundeen, Kathleen. Knight of the Living Dead: William Blake and the Problem of Ontology. Selinsgrove, Pa. : Susquehanna University Press, 2000.

Marsh, Nicholas. William Blake: The Poems. New York : Palgrave, 2001.

Spector, Sheila A. Glorious Incomprehensible: The Development of Blake's Kabbalistic Language. Lewisburg, PA : Bucknell University Press: 2001.

Vaughan, William. William Blake. London: Tate Gallery, 1999.

Whittaker, Jason. William Blake and the Myths of Britain. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER