![]() ![]() Later he studied at the Royal Academy of Arts and became an apprentice engraver at the age of 14. He had no formal education as a child, other than at a drawing school, but he read widely and avidly. William Blake was born into the family of a London tradesman in 1757. Nevertheless, he is also a poetic voice of high originality and occupies a unique place in the tradition of English poetry. ![]() Deeply embedded in 18th-century spiritual and philosophical thought but also a precursor of new developments, Blake is a transitional figure, often classified as a pre-Romantic poet. This emphasis on imagination is just one artistic feature that Blake has in common with the great Romantic poets of the following generation: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor College, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. ![]() They engage in subtle social criticism while espousing imagination and guileless joy as necessary but neglected values in the excessively rational world of the Enlightenment. The poems in this collection belong to Blake’s early and best-known work. ![]()
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