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William Blake (1757–1827) was a British poet, painter, and engraver whose visionary writing distinguishes him as a progenitor of British Romanticism. Though largely overlooked by his contemporaries, Blake viewed his literary and visual work as urgent interventions in the social, political, and moral order of his time. Politically, he disdained the monarchy and longed for the liberation represented by democracy. For this reason, the contemporary political revolutions in America and France moved him deeply. In works such as America (1793) and Europe (1794), he sought to imagine conditions for future freedom in his own home country. Though Blake didn’t receive a formal education, he attended drawing school and was later apprenticed to a master engraver in London. He eventually applied his skills as an engraver to his own poetry, “illuminating” his text with original designs. His first success at integrating these media was the publication of his Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), and he continued to develop the form in his later masterpieces, including Jerusalem (1804) and Milton (1808). Throughout this work, Blake maintained a resolute refusal of tyranny in all its forms—a stance he summarized in a characteristically proverbial form: “One law for the lion and ox is Oppression.”

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