William Blake (redirected from Illuminated printing)

Blake, William 

Born Nov. 28, 1757, in London; died there Aug. 12, 1827. English poet and artist. Son of a merchant.

Blake’s first verse collection, Poetical Sketches (1783), was optimistic in spirit. He welcomed the Great French Revolution (in the unfinished narrative poem The French Revolution, 1791), and sided with the democratic London Corresponding Society. His poetry collection Songs of Innocence (published in 1789) glorifies the joy of life, but Songs of Experience (1794) is permeated with dark moods. The satirical collection Proverbs of Hell (1793) frequently has anti-church overtones. In the Illuminated Books (1789–1820), Blake used mythological and biblical images to reflect the events of the French Revolution and the American War for Independence. As an artist, he illustrated his own poems with watercolors and engravings (Songs of Innocence, 1789; The Book of Job, 1818–25, published in 1826; and Dante’s Divine Comedy, 1825–27). His art tends toward romantic fantasy and symbolism and toward philosophical allegories; it is audacious in its arbitrary play of lines. Blake’s poetry is a transition from enlightenment to the romanticism of J. Keats and P. B. Shelley. The 200th anniversary of Blake’s birth was marked in 1957 following a decision of the World Peace Council.

WORKS

The Complete Writings. London-New York, 1957.
In Russian translation:
Izbrannoe. Translated by S. Marshak. Moscow, 1965.

REFERENCES

Istoriia angliiskoi literatury, vol. 1, issue 2. Moscow, 1945.
Elistratova, A. A. Nasledie angliiskogo romantizma i sovremennost’. Moscow, 1960.
Blunt, A. The Art of W. Blake. New York, 1959.
Blake: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1966.
Plowman, M. An Introduction to the Study of Blake, 2nd ed. London, 1967.
Holloway, J. Blake: The Lyric Poetry. London, [1968].

B. A. ALEKSANDROV