বায়োগ্রাফি: William Blake was a poet and a painter and printmaker who was born in Soho in London in 1757. Largely unpopular during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a shaping artist in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Blake made books of his poems which he illustrated. One of his most famous works is a book called Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake's early dreams lay not with poetry but with painting and at the age of 14, after attending drawing school, he was apprenticed to James Basire, engraver. He was the third of seven children. Blake's father, James, was a hosier. He attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life.