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Almost nothing William Blake published was set in type. From 1788 he wrote his poems backwards onto copper plates in an acid-resistant liquid, etched away the rest so that words and pictures stood in relief, printed the pages at home in Soho and Lambeth and coloured them by hand with his wife, Catherine. No two copies came out the same, and some books exist in only a handful. The engraver’s apprentice who did this was born in 1757 above his father’s hosiery shop in Broad Street, sold little in his lifetime and was called “an unfortunate lunatic” in the only review of his one exhibition. Today “The Tyger” is among the best-known poems in English, and the preface to his Milton is sung as the hymn “Jerusalem”. This guide covers his twelve key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1789–1965 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
William Blake’s best-known books are Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790–93), and the long prophetic books Milton and Jerusalem. Start with Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which holds “The Lamb”, “The Tyger” and “London”; read on for the order of the prophecies and the best complete edition.
Where to Start with William Blake
If you want the short lyric poems
→ Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) — “The Tyger”, “London” and the two “Chimney Sweeper” poems.
If you want his ideas in prose and proverbs
→ The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) — the Proverbs of Hell.
If you want the source of the hymn “Jerusalem”
→ Milton (1811) — its preface opens “And did those feet in ancient time”.
If you want everything in one volume
→ The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (1965).
12 William Blake Books, in Order
Songs of Innocence
His first illuminated book of lyrics, dated 1789 on its title page; the first printing ran to an estimated 17 or 18 copies. The poems, many spoken by or to children, include “The Lamb”, “The Little Black Boy”, “The Chimney Sweeper” and “Holy Thursday”. Blake went on selling it as a separate book after he combined it with Experience in 1794.
The Book of Thel
A short narrative poem in long unrhymed lines, dated 1789. Thel, the youngest daughter of Mne Seraphim, troubled that she must fade, questions a lily, a cloud, a worm and a clod of clay about death; when she is shown the world of mortal life she flees back with a shriek to the vales of Har.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Composed between about 1790 and 1793, mostly in prose: a satirical answer to the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, in which the narrator visits Hell and finds energy and desire where Swedenborg saw only evil. It holds the Proverbs of Hell, among them “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”, and closes with “A Song of Liberty”. Aldous Huxley took the title of The Doors of Perception (1954) from it, and the band The Doors took theirs from Huxley.
Visions of the Daughters of Albion
Oothoon, who loves Theotormon, is raped by Bromion; Theotormon, jealous, rejects her, and she argues for love free of possession while the daughters of Albion lament. The poem links sexual possession with slavery, which Bromion boasts of, and is often read beside Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing of the same years.
America a Prophecy
The American Revolution told as myth: Washington, Franklin and Paine stand alongside Orc, the spirit of revolt, who breaks free against Albion’s Angel, a figure for the British crown. It is the first of the “continental prophecies”, written in the years after the French Revolution.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
The 1789 Innocence poems joined in 1794 by their darker counterparts, often answering poems of the same title: a second “Chimney Sweeper” and “Holy Thursday”, and “The Tyger” to set against “The Lamb”. Experience also holds “London” and “The Sick Rose”. Every copy was printed and coloured by hand. Vaughan Williams, Britten and William Bolcom have set the poems to music; Bolcom set the whole sequence in 1984.
Europe a Prophecy
The second continental prophecy: Enitharmon, a figure of female will, sleeps through the eighteen hundred years of the Christian era while Europe is ruled by restraint, and wakes as revolution breaks out in France. Its frontispiece is the image of a bearded god measuring the world with compasses known as The Ancient of Days.
The First Book of Urizen
Blake’s own version of Genesis. Urizen, the god of reason and law, separates himself from eternity and writes books of iron and brass; the prophet Los binds him in a body, and their struggle produces the fallen material world. Its full-page designs, some with no text, are among his most powerful images.
Milton
Begun at Felpham in Sussex, where Blake lived from 1800 to 1803; the title page is dated 1804, and the first copies were printed around 1811. The poet John Milton returns from eternity to correct the errors of his own work and enters Blake’s left foot in his Felpham garden. The preface ends with the lines beginning “And did those feet in ancient time”, set by Hubert Parry in 1916 as the hymn “Jerusalem”.
Jerusalem
His longest and most richly decorated book, a hundred plates in four chapters, dated 1804 on its title page and finished around 1820. Albion, the giant who stands for Britain and for humanity, falls into division and despair, and Los, the blacksmith-poet, labours to build Golgonooza, the city of art, until Albion is redeemed. Only one copy was fully coloured.
Illustrations of the Book of Job
Twenty-one engravings and an engraved title page, commissioned by his younger friend the painter John Linnell and published by the two of them; the plates are dated March 1825, and the set was issued in 1826 in 315 copies. They tell Job’s story in images, with Bible verses engraved in the borders, and are often counted his finest work as an engraver.
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
The standard one-volume text, edited by David V. Erdman with commentary by Harold Bloom, first published in 1965 and later revised. It prints all the illuminated books, the unfinished Four Zoas, the notebook and manuscript poems, his annotations to other writers and his letters. It reproduces the words only; for the plates, see facsimile editions or the online William Blake Archive.
In What Order to Read William Blake
Read the short lyrics before the prophecies. Songs of Innocence and of Experience needs no background; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell then sets out, in prose and proverbs, the idea of “contraries” behind both the songs and the later books. The continental prophecies of 1793–94 (America, Europe) and The First Book of Urizen introduce the figures, Urizen, Los and Orc, who return in everything that follows.
Leave Milton and Jerusalem until last; they assume you know that cast. Wherever you can, read Blake with the plates, in a facsimile or on the William Blake Archive, since a text-only edition loses half of what he made.
A reading path
1. Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
2. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790–93)
3. America a Prophecy (1793)
4. The First Book of Urizen (1794)
5. Milton (c. 1811)
6. Jerusalem (c. 1820)
Everything Else William Blake Wrote
Beyond the 12 key books: 9 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early and shorter works
7
7 books · 1783–1809
- 1783Poetical Sketcheshis only conventionally printed book of poems, written in his teens and early twenties
- 1788All Religions Are Oneearly tractate, among his first experiments in relief etching
- 1788There Is No Natural Religiontwo series of aphorisms against the philosophy of the senses
- 1795The Book of Ahaniasequel to Urizen
- 1795The Book of Losthe fall told from the side of Los
- 1795The Song of Loscompletes the continental prophecies with “Africa” and “Asia”
- 1809A Descriptive Cataloguewritten for his 1809 exhibition in Broad Street
Manuscript poems
2
2 books · 1796–1803
- 1796The Four Zoasbegun as Vala around 1796 and left unfinished in manuscript by about 1807
- 1803Auguries of Innocencefrom the Pickering Manuscript; opens “To see a World in a Grain of Sand”
The years · 1757–1827
Quick facts about William Blake
- Known for
- William Blake is known for illuminated books he etched, printed and coloured himself, above all Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and for a visionary mythology that made him, after his death, one of the central figures of English Romanticism.
- 1757
- Born in Broad Street, Soho
- 1772
- Apprenticed to the engraver James Basire
- 1800
- Moves to Felpham, Sussex
- 1809
- His only exhibition, in Broad Street
- 1827
- Dies in London, aged 69
- Born
- 28 November 1757, 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick Street), Soho, London
- Died
- 12 August 1827, London; buried at Bunhill Fields
- Training
- Apprenticed to the engraver James Basire in 1772; Royal Academy Schools from October 1779
- Married
- Catherine Boucher, at St Mary’s, Battersea, on 18 August 1782
- Patrons
- Thomas Butts, William Hayley and John Linnell
- Grave
- His exact plot at Bunhill Fields was traced by Luis and Carol Garrido; a new stone was unveiled there on 12 August 2018
The red mark is 1794: the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience, his best-known book.
How William Blake Writes: Poems Made as Pictures
Blake was a printmaker before he was a published poet, and his books were made as objects. In relief etching he wrote the text in reverse on copper with an acid-resistant medium, around and inside his designs, then bit the rest of the plate away and printed the raised surface. He and Catherine coloured the sheets by hand, and he changed colours, plate order and even the number of plates from copy to copy, so each surviving copy is a different version.
His short poems use the plainest forms in English, the ballad stanza, the nursery rhyme and the hymn, to say hard things: “London” and the second “Chimney Sweeper” are about child labour, the church and the state. The longer books build a mythology of his own, with Urizen for law and reason, Orc for revolt and Los for the imagination at work, because, as Los says in Jerusalem, “I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans”.
Underneath both runs one idea, stated in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “Without Contraries is no progression.” Innocence needs experience, reason needs energy, and the poems set opposites against each other rather than choosing between them. For another poet who worked mostly outside the literary world of his day, see the guide to Emily Dickinson.
Frequently asked questions about William Blake’s books
How many books has William Blake written?
This page lists twelve key books: ten illuminated books, his engravings for the Book of Job (1826), and a complete edition of his writings. Nine more works are listed under “Everything else”, among them Poetical Sketches (1783), his only conventionally printed book of poems, and the unfinished manuscript The Four Zoas.
What are William Blake’s books in order?
Songs of Innocence (1789), The Book of Thel (1789), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790–93), Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), America a Prophecy (1793), Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794), Europe a Prophecy (1794), The First Book of Urizen (1794), Milton (dated 1804, printed c. 1811), Jerusalem (dated 1804, finished c. 1820) and Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826).
Where should I start with William Blake?
With Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794): short poems, many of them paired, including “The Lamb”, “The Tyger” and “London”. Then read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
What is William Blake’s most famous book?
Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and within it “The Tyger”. His most famous lines outside it are the preface to Milton, sung as the hymn “Jerusalem”.
Did William Blake write the hymn Jerusalem?
He wrote the words. They are the short poem beginning “And did those feet in ancient time” in the preface to Milton; Sir Hubert Parry set them to music in 1916. The hymn has nothing to do with Blake’s long poem Jerusalem.
Which edition of William Blake should I buy?
For all the words in one volume, The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman. Because Blake’s books combine text and image, it is worth pairing it with a facsimile of Songs of Innocence and of Experience or with the free William Blake Archive online, which reproduces many copies plate by plate.
Was William Blake mad?
He was called so. He said from childhood that he saw visions, and in 1809 Robert Hunt, reviewing his exhibition in The Examiner, called him “an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement” and his catalogue “a farrago of nonsense”. Friends and later biographers describe a clear-headed, hard-working craftsman, and the charge is no longer taken seriously.
Was William Blake tried for sedition?
Yes. In 1803, at Felpham, he threw a soldier, John Schofield, out of his garden; Schofield accused him of assault and of cursing the king. Blake was tried at the Chichester assizes in January 1804 and acquitted.
Was William Blake famous in his lifetime?
No. He earned his living mainly as an engraver of other artists’ designs, sold few copies of his own books, and died in modest lodgings in 1827. His reputation grew after Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (1863), and the poets and painters of the following century, Yeats among them, made him a central Romantic.
Where is William Blake buried?
In Bunhill Fields, the Dissenters’ burial ground in London, where he was buried five days after his death in a shared, unmarked plot. After the exact spot was identified by Luis and Carol Garrido, the Blake Society placed a new gravestone there on 12 August 2018, the 191st anniversary of his death.
Footnotes
- William Blake — Britannica
- William Blake — English History
- Songs of Innocence and of Experience — Wikipedia
- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — Wikipedia
- William Blake’s 1809 exhibition — Tate Papers
- New gravestone for William Blake — Enfilade, 2018
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790–93), Proverbs of Hell
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