William Blake

(1757-1827)

English Poet and Painter

William Blake was born in London on November 28, 1757. Blake is known as a mystic, a painter, and a poet. He was self-educated at home and also studied art at the Royal Academy of Art. In 1788 he experimented with relief etching, a method that he called "illuminated printing" which Blake used to produce most of his books of poems. In 1784 he set up a print shop, but that enterprise failed after a few years. He managed to make a living as an engraver and illustrator instead. He was little known as a poet during his lifetime, but he nevertheless became an important influence on the early British Romantic poets just the same. His audience was uncertain of what to make of the mystical, visionary world that endows much of his poetry and its related illustrations as well. It is said that "....one of the strongest features in Blake's philosophy was his belief in imagination as an active creative force." Poet, William Woodsworth was intrigued by Blake's genius as well as he stated: " There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott."
Blake nevertheless attacked and despised industrialization and its effects. These feelings are well reflected into the following poem, "The Tyger." [If you read this poem out loud - you may notice how mechanical the Tyger really sounds...this may raise the question of whether the Tyger is, among other things a metaphor of industrialization.....a lot of his poems seem to represent "two contrary states of the human soul" as Blake envisioned it.]