london

william blake

Published: 1794

Birth - Death: 1757 - 1827

Monarch: George III

Prime Minister: William Pitt (Tory)

Nationality: English

London was published in Songs of Experience and 1794 and is one of the few poems that don’t have a corresponding poem. Blake lived in the city of London and references the culture and society of London during those times. Songs of Experience was combined with Songs of Innocence, making Songs of Innocence and of Experience; Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Songs of Innocence held poems embracing childhood and innocence, while Songs of Experience reveals tainted poems of the loss of childhood innocence by fear due to experience. Blake wrote this to explain to the public the average citizens life in poverty.

who is william blake?

William Blake was an English (romanticist) poet, painter and print-maker.

William Blake was born in Soho, London on November 28, 1757 by James, a hosier and Catherine Blake who were both dissenters (nonconformists – separated from the church of England).

From early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions, at four he saw God “put his head to the window”; around age nine, while walking through the countryside, he saw a tree filled with angels. Although his parents tried to discourage him from “lying," they did observe that he was different from his peers and did not force him to attend conventional school.

At age ten, Blake expressed a wish to become a painter, so his parents sent him to art school. Two years later, Blake began writing poetry.

When he turned fourteen, he apprenticed with an engraver because art school proved too costly. One of Blake’s assignments as apprentice was to sketch the tombs at Westminster Abbey, exposing him to a variety of Gothic styles from which he would draw inspiration throughout his career.

After his seven-year term ended, he studied briefly at the Royal Academy.

In 1782, he married an illiterate woman named Catherine Boucher. Blake taught her to read and to write, and also instructed her in craftsmanship.

The couple had no children.

In 1784 he set up a print-shop with a friend and former fellow apprentice, James Parker, but this venture failed after several years.

Due to that failure, Blake made a inadequate living as an engraver and illustrator for books and magazines.

Blake also began training his younger brother Robert in drawing, painting, and engraving.

Robert fell ill during the winter of 1787 and succumbed, probably to consumption. As Robert died, Blake saw his brother’s spirit rise through the ceiling, “clapping its hands for joy.” He believed that Robert’s spirit continued to visit him and later claimed that in a dream Robert taught him the printing method that he used in Songs of Innocence and other “illuminated” works.

He published his most popular collection, Songs of Innocence, in 1789 and followed it, in 1794, with Songs of Experience. Both books of Songs were printed in an illustrated format reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts. The text and illustrations were printed from copper plates, and each picture was finished by hand in watercolours.

Blake wrote several poems to express his opposition to the English monarchy, and to 18th-century political and social tyranny in general as well as mocking the oppressive authority in church.

In 1800 Blake moved to the seacoast town of Felpham, where he lived and worked until 1803.

He taught himself Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Italian, so that he could read classical works in their original language.

Blake’s final years, spent in great poverty, were cheered by the admiring friendship of a group of younger artists.

Blake died on the 12th August 1827. On that day he worked heavily and when he stopped he promised his wife he would always be there, painted and sang and after, he died from liver failure.

society & politics

In 1789 the French revolution occurred and was said to be an end to tyranny and despotism to radical thinkers.

The French revolution contributed to the growth of radical political groups, making the government worried of their authority. They started to crack down on the freedom of the press.

Many families were forced to live in single rooms in ramshackle tenements or in damp cellars, with no sanitation or fresh air. Drinking water was often contaminated by raw sewage and garbage was left rotting in the street.

Problems with the disposal of the dead often added to the stench and decay. Many London graveyards became full, and coffins were sometimes left partially uncovered in ‘poor holes’ close to local houses and businesses.

In London, perhaps one in five children died before their second birthday. In certain districts the infant mortality rate reached 75% of all births whenever epidemics struck.

The rise of the ‘Gin Craze’ from the 1720s made matters worse. Distilling gin was inexpensive because of low corn prices: so much so that by 1750 nearly half of all British wheat harvests went directly into gin production.

Children started work on average at eight and a half years old.

In the countryside their work consisted of bird-scaring, sowing crops and driving horses. In the city, most boys were employed as errand boys or chimney sweepers.

Many young women would sell their body through prostitution and the chances of catching venereal disease was high.

During the late eighteenth century, the largest slave trading country in the world was the United Kingdom. In the 1790s, the British trafficked in 45,000 slaves per year. The public had an insatiable appetite for the products of slave labour.

During the decade of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, slavery and the slave trade were matters of constant debate. But Blake’s three engravings of tortured slaves, are the most graphic and moving.

what IS: songs of innocence and of experience; shewing the two contrary states of the human soul?

Songs of Innocence and of Experience are “poem-pictures,” intended for children.

There were 23 poems in Songs of Innocence when it was first issued in 1789 but Songs of Experience, which was issued together with Songs of Innocence in 1794 would consist of 26 poems. This included 4 poems transferred from Songs of Innocence due to their darker mood.

Many of the poems in Songs of Innocence are pastoral and take place among green hills and spring meadows in the company of lambs and shepherds. In Songs of Innocence children are usually protected by caring adults, and God himself is incarnate and concerned.

In Songs of Experience even children have lost their innocence, and it is far less certain that the adult or even God is interested in the plight of the weak. Selfishness and cynicism have replaced concern and belief.

In the world of Songs of Experience, the idealised pastoral landscape appears far less often. Corruption and jealousy have replaced laughter and joy.

“Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence” – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. To these we might add “innocence” and “experience,” what Blake calls in his subtitle, “The Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.”