How do the Songs relate to previous literature? The songs are specifically ‘of’ and not ‘for’ innocence and experience. Though Blake stated that children could understand his work as well as, or better than, adults, this is rather a comment on how children understand things directly and without the clouded perceptions that derive from the compromises required by adult life. Only a small number of copies were made, and sold privately to friends and collectors. Blake invented a new way of printing, designing the work in reverse with varnish on metal plates, which were then etched with acid to produce relief printing surfaces these were printed in brown ink, and the prints were coloured by hand. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is regarded as both a visual and literary work of art. In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, perhaps his most famous collection of poems, he investigates, as he put it in the subtitle, ‘the two contrary states of the human soul’. Working at a time of great social and political change, his work explores the tensions between the human passions and the repressive nature of social and political conventions. William Blake was an artist, poet, mystic, visionary and radical thinker. Wherever this poem is encountered it delights, worthy of the scrutiny that it is given both as a literary work and a work of art in its own right. ‘The Tyger’ is one of a collection of poems from Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. When Blake was alive I sounds were often written with a Y. That’s because the poem was written in the 18th Century at a time when the English language was still developing. We should probably explain why the word Tyger is spelt differently from how we’re used to. We think it’s amazing that we can read through his personal notebook which dates back to the 18th century! They have also digitised his notebook where you can see his early sketches and occasional scribbles lines of poetry. Happily, the British Library have a digitised version of this collection from 1923 so you can flick through the pages of his work and see close up all the details of his work. The Tyger is part of a wider collection published by Blake. You can learn more about Blake on the British Library’s website.

Blake is also well known for his radical political views, something you might get an impression of from the poem. Blake was a highly skilled artist and he experimented with styles, combining poetry with images, much like we can see in The Tyger.

He was born in London in 1757 and spent much of his early life as an apprentice engraver to the print-maker James Basire. William Blake was an English poet, painter and engraver. The Tyger is an illustrated poem written by William Blake, it was published in 1794 in a collection of poems, written by Blake, called ‘Songs of Experience’.

The tyger songs of experience