William Blake Popular Books
William Blake Biography & Facts
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he came to be highly regarded by later critics and readers for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". A theist who preferred his own Marcionite style of theology, he was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), and was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions. Although later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amicable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors". Early life William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in Soho, London. He was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier, who had lived in London. He attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of 10, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake (née Wright). Even though the Blakes were English Dissenters, William was baptised on 11 December at St James's Church, Piccadilly, London. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Blake's childhood, according to him, included mystical religious experiences such as "beholding God's face pressed against his window, seeing angels among the haystacks, and being visited by the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel." Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, a practice that was preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck and Albrecht Dürer. The number of prints and bound books that James and Catherine were able to purchase for young William suggests that the Blakes enjoyed, at least for a time, a comfortable wealth. When William was ten years old, his parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school but instead enrolled in drawing classes at Henry Pars' drawing school in the Strand. He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake made explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, and the Psalms. Apprenticeship On 4 August 1772, Blake was apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, at the sum of £52.10, for a term of seven years. At the end of the term, aged 21, he became a professional engraver. No record survives of any serious disagreement or conflict between the two during the period of Blake's apprenticeship, but Peter Ackroyd's biography notes that Blake later added Basire's name to a list of artistic adversaries; and then crossed it out. This aside, Basire's style of line-engraving was of a kind held at the time to be old-fashioned compared to the flashier stipple or mezzotint styles. It has been speculated that Blake's instruction in this outmoded form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life. After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London (perhaps to settle a quarrel between Blake and James Parker, his fellow apprentice). His experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies and varicoloured waxworks. Ackroyd notes that "...the most immediate [impression] would have been of faded brightness and colour". This close study of the Gothic (which he saw as the "living form") left clear traces in his style. In the long afternoons Blake spent sketching in the Abbey, he was occasionally interrupted by boys from Westminster School, who were allowed in the Abbey. They teased him and one tormented him so much that Blake knocked the boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence". After Blake complained to the Dean, the schoolboys' privilege was withdrawn. Blake claimed that he experienced visions in the Abbey. He saw Christ with his Apostles and a great procession of monks and priests, and heard their chant. Royal Academy On 8 October 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy in Old Somerset House, near the Strand. While the terms of his study required no payment, he was expected to supply his own materials throughout the six-year period. There, he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens, championed by the school's first president, Joshua Reynolds. Over time, Blake came to detest Reynolds' attitude towards art, especially his pursuit of "general truth" and "general beauty". Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that the "disposition to abstractions, to generalising and classification, is the great glory of the human mind"; Blake responded, in marginalia to his personal copy, that "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit". Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent humility, which he held to be a form of hypocrisy. Against Reynolds' fashionable oil painting, Blake preferred the Classical precision of his early influences, Michelangelo and Raphael. David Bindman suggests that Blake's antagonism towards Reynolds arose not so much from the president's opinions (like Blake, Reynolds held history painting to be of greater value than landscape and portraiture), but rather "against his hypocrisy in not putting his ideals into practice." Certainly Blake was not averse to exhibiting at the Royal Academy, submitting works on six occasions between 1780 and 1808. Blake became a friend of John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and George Cumberland during his first year.... Discover the William Blake popular books. Find the top 100 most popular William Blake books.
Best Seller William Blake Books of 2024
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William Blake
G.K. ChestertonWilliam Blake by G.K. Chesterton is the biography of the wellknown English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a semina...
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50 Greatest Poems of William Blake
William BlakeWilliam Blake was born in London in 1757, his talent as a artist was recognised and was admitted in 1797 as a student to the Royal Academy. However rather than following a more co...
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William Blake
James FentonIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, t...
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The Lais of Marie De France
Marie FranceMarie de France (fl. late twelfth century) is the earliest known French woman poet and her lais stories in verse based on Breton tales of chivalry and romance are among the fines...
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William Blake
Michael DavisThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voi...
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William Blake
John LucasThe collection of essays presented in this volume represents some of the best recent critical work on William Blake as poet, prophet, visual artist, and social and political critic...
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William Blake
Basil De SelincourtThis book on William Blake features his theories on art. This book was created from a scan of the original artifact, and as such the text of the book is not selectable or searcha...
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Burning Bright
Tracy ChevalierFrom the author of the international bestseller Girl With a Pearl Earring and At the Edge of the Orchard, comes a stirring eighteenthcentury comingofage taleIn the waning days...
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William Blake
Osbert BurdettPoet, draughtsman, engraver and painter, William Blake’s work is made up of several elements – Gothic art, Germanic reverie, the Bible, Milton and Shakespeare – to which were added...
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William Blake
Gilbert Keith ChestertonThis biography of the great English artist William Blake was written by famed author G.K. Chesterton and is accompanied by many illustrations from Blake's works.
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Life of William Blake
Alexander GilchristThis vintage book contains a detailed biography of William Blake. William Blake (1757–1827) was an English painter and poet. As with many of his ilk, Blake's artistic endeavour...
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William Blake
Osbert BurdettAls Hauptvertreter der romantischen Bewegung war der britische Künstler William Blake (17571827) gleichzeitig Dichter, Maler, Designer und Graphiker. Er illustrierte seine literari...
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Collected Poems of William Blake
William Blake & Neil AzevedoA complete collection of the poems of William Blake. Blake (17571827) was an English poet, engraver, and painter. Early in his life, his unique and deceptively simple poems marked ...
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William Blake
Armand HimyWilliam Blake (17571827) est bien connu du public comme dessinateur, graveur, peintre, aquarelliste; le succès renouvelé des expositions de la Tate Gallery l’atteste. La variété de...
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Rest in Pieces
Bess LovejoyA “marvelously macabre” (Kirkus Reviews) history of the bizarre afterlives of corpses of the celebrated and notorious dead.For some of the most influential figures in history, deat...
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William Blake
Arthur SymonsWhen Blake spoke the first word of the nineteenth century there was no one to hear it, and now that his message, the message of emancipation from reality through the 'shaping spiri...
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William Blake vs. the World
John HiggsA wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.Poet, artist, and visionary, William Blak...
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William Blake
Algernon Charles SwindburneThis volume presents an exhaustive study of Blake's entire body of work. Many of his illustrations are included and discussed as well.
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Poems of William Blake
William BlakeWilliam Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English painter, poet and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal...
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Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen'Jane Austen is a genius, and Northanger Abbey is hugely underrated' Martin AmisWith its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and...
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William Blake
Algernon Charles SwinburneWith centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are w...
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William Blake
Charles GardnerThis book is an attempt to trace the mental and spiritual growth of William Blake as disclosed in his works. The author has tried to present this story with the aid of such biograp...
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William Blake
Alfred Thomas StoryWritten 70 years after William Blake's death, this book summarizes his life and works.
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Complete Works of William Blake. Illustrated
William BlakeWhile his contemporaries considered Blake a madman, we now appreciate him as an important figure in the development of romantic and mystical poetry.Blake's poetry is unique from ev...
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The Portable Blake
William Blake & Alfred KazinThe Portable Blake contains the hermetic genius's most important works: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in their entirety; selections from his "prophetic books"including...
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William Blake
Algernon Charles SwinburneIt is a biographical book. William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English painter, poet and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now con...
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Delphi Complete Works of William Blake
William BlakeThe Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This monumental volume presents for the first time ever the complete works ...
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William Blake
Algernon Charles SwinburneWilliam Blake Algernon Charles Swinburne, english poet, playwright, novelist, and critic (18371909) This ebook presents «William Blake», from Algernon Charles Swinburne. A dynamic ...
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William Blake
William Blake & Peter Butter'To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour' William BlakeWilliam Blake was a poet an...
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William Blake
Arthur SymonsWith centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are w...
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William Blake
Gilbert Keith ChestertonWilliam Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visu...
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William Blake
Gilbert Keith ChestertonThis book is Chesterton's biography of the great English writer, painter and engraver.
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Collection of English Poetry
William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, G. G. Lord Byron, John Keats, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth & W. B. YeatsTable of Contents:William BlakeElizabeth Barrett BrowningRobert BrowningG. G. Lord ByronJohn KeatsWilliam ShakespearePercy Bysshe ShelleyAlfred Lord TennysonWilliam WordsworthW. B....
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William Blake
G.K. ChestertonG.K. Chesterton was an English writer, theologian and poet. Chesterton, also known as the prince of paradox, wrote on a vast variety of subjects using an unorthodox yet inter...
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Works of William Blake
William BlakeThis collection was designed for optimal navigation on iPad and other electronic devices. It is indexed alphabetically, chronologically and by category, making it easier to access...
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William Blake and the Age of Revolution
Jacob BronowskiBronowski was fascinated by William Blake for much of his life. His first book about him, A Man Without a Mask, was published in 1944. In 1958 his famous Penguin selection of Blake...
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William Blake
G. K. ChestertonWith centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are w...