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Hello, the artist in Perth William Blake published Songs of Innocence in 1789, the year

of the French Revolution.

He was 32.

Five years later, he added Songs of Experience, and from that point, he produced them together

in the volume we have today.

Together, the Songs entertain teams such as Childhood, Education, Free Will, Free Love,

and the role of Establish Religion, all in lines of apparent simplicity.

And we know them now for some of the best love poems in the English language such as Tiger,

Tiger, the Sick Rows, and London.

In Blake's lifetime though, these poems were largely unknown.

Partly as he made only 50 copies, each coloured painstakingly by hand and circulated by

friends like Colourige and Wordsworth, and his death in 1827 Blake was known for his

art, not for his poetry.

With me to discuss William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, I said John

and Bade, Provost of Worcester College University of Oxford, Sarah Hagerty, lecturer at the Faculty

of English and Fellow of Queens College Cambridge, and John Me, Professor of 18th Century Studies

at the University of York, John and Bade, what was William Blake's early life like?

Well, it's very important to remember that Blake came from rather different background

from the other famous Romantics, Wordsworth and Colourige.

...