BLAKE, WILLIAM

born Nov. 28, 1757, London died Aug. 12, 1827, London Pity, colour print finished in pen and watercolour by William Blake, 1795; in the English poet, painter (see photograph), engraver, and visionary mystic whose hand-illustrated series of lyrical and epic poems, beginning with Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), form one of the most strikingly original and independent bodies of work in the Western cultural tradition. Blake is now regarded as one of the earliest and greatest figures of Romanticism. Yet he was ignored by the public of his day and was called mad because he was single-minded and unworldly; he lived on the edge of poverty and died in neglect. Additional reading For biographies, see Mona Wilson, The Life of William Blake, 3rd ed., rev. by Geoffrey Keynes (1971); Jack Lindsay, William Blake: His Life and Work (1978); and Michael Davis, William Blake: A New Kind of Man (1977). See also S. Foster Damon, William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols (1924, reprinted 1969); Mark Schorer, William Blake: The Politics of Vision (1946, reissued 1975); Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition, 2 vol. (1968); and David V. Erdman, Blake, Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His Own Times, 3rd ed. (1977). For the fullest historical analysis of Blake's art, see David Bindman, Blake as an Artist (1977), The Complete Graphic Works of William Blake (1978, reprinted 1986), and William Blake, His Art and Times (1982).