Resources

Below are articles from the British Library - use these resources to support your revision of the contexts surrounding Blake and interpretations of key poems.

Articles on Songs of Innocence and of Experience:

William Blake's radical politicsThe French Revolution inspired London radicals and reformers to increase their demands for change. Others called for moderation and stability, while the government tried to suppress radical activity. Professor Andrew Lincoln describes the political environment in which William Blake was writing.

William Blake and 18th-century children’s literatureJulian Walker looks at William Blake’s poetry in the context of 18th-century children’s literature, considering how the poems’ attitudes towards childhood challenge traditional ideas about moral education during that period.

Looking at the manuscript of William Blake’s ‘London’Alterations to the draft of William Blake’s ‘London’ show the poet exploring poverty, revolution, reason and the power of the imagination. Dr Linda Freedman examines the manuscript, to discover the meanings behind this iconic poem.

Blake's two chimney sweepersSongs of Innocence and of Experience contains two poems about young chimney sweepers: one in 'Innocence' and one in 'Experience'. Dr Linda Freedman considers how this allows for a complex, subtle engagement with the figure of the sweep.

William Blake’s Chimney Sweeper poems: a close readingGeorge Norton shows how William Blake’s Chimney Sweeper poems highlight the injustice and brutality suffered by child chimney sweeps in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

An introduction to 'The Tyger'George Norton's close reading of William Blake’s 'The Tyger' considers the poem's imagery through 18th-century industrial and political revolutions and moral literature.

Context Articles:

The RomanticsDr Stephanie Forward explains the key ideas and influences of Romanticism, and considers their place in the work of writers including Wordsworth, Blake, P B Shelley and Keats.

The impact of the French Revolution in BritainRuth Mather considers how Britain's intellectual, political and creative circles responded to the French Revolution.

Perceptions of childhoodIn the mid-18th century, childhood began to be viewed in a positive light, as a state of freedom and innocence. Professor Kimberley Reynolds explores how this new approach influenced 18th and 19th-century writers, some of whom wished they could preserve childhood indefinitely.

Child labourIndustrialisation led to a dramatic increase in child labour. Professor Emma Griffin explores the dangerous, exhausting work undertaken by children in factories and mines, and the literary responses of writers including Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Landscape and the SublimeProfessor Philip Shaw considers how Romantic writers thought about the grandest and most terrifying aspects of nature, and the ways in which their writing responded to and influenced theories of the sublime.

Romanticism: An Art Movement That Emphasized Emotion and Turned to the SublimeHow much do you know about Romanticism?

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