William Blake: Life and Background

Abstract

William Blake was born in London on 28 November 1757, the second of five children of James Blake, a hosier, and his wife Catherine. This was not the 'poor background' maintained by some sentimental early admirers of Blake, but rather a solidly lower-middle-class one. The fact that Blake had little formal education, for instance, was probably due less to his family's inability to provide him with one than to his father's willingness to cater for his precocious artistic talents. In 1767, at the age of ten, Blake was enrolled in Henry Pars's drawing school in the Strand in the West End of London – one of the best and most fashionable preparatory schools for young artists. Here Blake was introduced to the study of ideal form by being set to draw from plaster casts of antique sculpture, and also to the pleasures and benefits of collecting prints of the work of great artists of the past.