Comparing William Blake and William Wordsworth

Comparing Blake and Wordsworth

William Blake and William Wordsworth were two of the most influential of all of the romantic writers, although neither was fully appreciated until years after his death. They grew up with very different lifestyles which greatly affected the way they as individuals viewed the world and wrote about it. Both play an important role in Literature today. Despite their differences, with their literature backgrounds they cannot help but have a few similarities.

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney. He lost his mother when he was only eight years old and then five years later his father. The domestic problems separated him from his neurotic sister, Dorothy, whom he was very close with. However, despite all his hardships and with the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth was able to go to Cambridge and continue with his studies. He made his writing debut in 1987, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. That very same year he began school at St. John’s College, Cambridge where he would later graduate with a B.A..

William Blake was born in London in 1757, the son of a hosier, he was one of four children. At the age of nine, he told his parents that he had seen visions, mostly of angels, that he continued to see for the rest of his life. Blake's artistic abilities were obvious even as a child so when he was ten years old his parents sent him to drawing school. When he was 14, he began a seven-year apprenticeship as a copy engraver then he began to make his living by working for London Book and print publishers. He briefly attended the Royal Academy of arts, but left shortly after beginning. He left because he felt his teachers did not appreciate his work. He then began to study painting on his own. His first collection of poems was privately published by some of his supportive friends. In 1782, he married his wife Catherine Sophia Boucher, taught her to read and write, and she became his devoted assistant.

William Blake and William Wordsworth both wrote about the city of London, though they presented their views from totally different angles. William Blake wrote about the dreary ugliness of London life by taking a stroll down London’s streets, while, William Wordsworth writes more about the beauty in London. This could be due to the fact that Blake lived in London most of his life (with the exception of the three years he lived in Sussex, in the south of England, where he worked for his friend, the landowner and poet William Hayley) and that Wordsworth did not. Both Blake and Wordsworth like to emphasize children in their poetry Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience for example especially appear to treat childhood as a symbol of the human condition according to his perspective. Wordsworth