William Blake Trivia
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59 free William Blake trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This William Blake trivia quiz covers the poet, painter and printmaker who was largely ignored in his lifetime and is now a fixture of every English literature course. It begins with the boy in Soho who saw angels in a tree on Peckham Rye, follows him through his engraving apprenticeship, the Royal Academy and the Gordon Riots, and into the illuminated books he printed by hand with his wife Catherine: Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Milton and the prophetic books. There are questions on the poems everyone half-remembers (The Tyger, London, The Lamb), on the hymn 'Jerusalem' and its long afterlife with suffragists, the Women's Institute and the Proms, on the paintings (Newton, The Ancient of Days, The Ghost of a Flea) and on the odder corners of the story: the sedition trial in Chichester, the Visionary Heads, the archangels he said read his work, and the grave that went unmarked until 2018. About a third are easy; the rest are for people who know their Zoas. See also our Romantic poets and English literature quizzes. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Blake, his poems, paintings and circle, and each explanation adds one more detail.
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Q 01In which London district was William Blake born in 1757?
Soho
Blake was born in Soho on 28 November 1757, at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick Street); the house was demolished long ago.
Q 02What was the trade of Blake's father, James?
Hosier
James Blake was a hosier, selling stockings and gloves from the family shop at 28 Broad Street; William was his third child, and two of the siblings died in infancy.
Q 03At what age did Blake leave school, after which his mother educated him at home?
10
Blake left school at 10, taught afterwards by his mother at home, and was soon enrolled at a drawing school in the Strand.
Q 04As a boy on Peckham Rye, Blake claimed to have seen a tree filled with what?
Angels
Blake said he saw a tree on Peckham Rye filled with angels, bright wings bespangling every bough; his father nearly thrashed him for lying until his mother intervened.
Q 05Which Old Testament prophet did the young Blake claim had visited him?
Ezekiel
Blake told of seeing the prophet Ezekiel sitting under a tree in a field; at about four he had also seen God put his head to the window.
Q 06To which engraver was Blake apprenticed for seven years from 1772?
James Basire
Blake was apprenticed to James Basire, engraver of Great Queen Street, from 4 August 1772; his father paid £52.10, and Blake later listed Basire among his artistic enemies, then crossed him out.
Q 07Sketching the monuments of which building during his apprenticeship shaped Blake's Gothic style?
Westminster Abbey
Sent by his master to draw the medieval tombs in Westminster Abbey, Blake absorbed the Gothic style that shaped his art; a bronze bust of him by Jacob Epstein stands in Poets' Corner.
Q 08In June 1780 Blake was swept along by a mob that stormed Newgate Prison during which upheaval?
The Gordon Riots
The Gordon Riots of June 1780, anti-Catholic riots provoked by the Papists Act of 1778, burned Newgate Prison and freed its prisoners; Blake was reportedly carried along at the front of the crowd.
Q 09Which institution's founding president, Joshua Reynolds, did the student Blake rebel against in 1779?
The Royal Academy
Blake entered the Royal Academy schools in October 1779 and despised its first president Joshua Reynolds, yet exhibited there himself, first in 1780 with The Death of Earl Goodwin.
Q 10In which church did Blake marry Catherine Boucher in August 1782?
St Mary's, Battersea
Blake married Catherine Boucher at St Mary's, Battersea, on 18 August 1782; he had met her there the year before, nursing a rejected courtship, and won her by asking 'Do you pity me?'
Q 11How did the illiterate Catherine sign her wedding contract?
With an X
Catherine Boucher, then illiterate, signed the marriage register with an X; Blake later taught her to read and write, and she helped colour his illuminated books.
Q 12What was Blake's first poetry collection, published around 1783 after a dinner-party recital won him patrons?
Poetical Sketches
Poetical Sketches, Blake's juvenile verse, was printed in 1783 after he recited and sang it at the Mathews' salon; John Flaxman and the Rev. A. S. Mathew paid for the printing.
Q 13What printing method did Blake invent in 1788, at the age of 31?
Relief etching
Q 21In Blake's mythology, which bearded figure embodies conventional reason and law?
Urizen
Urizen, the bearded lawgiver of Blake's myth, embodies restrictive reason; he is pictured with nets and measuring tools, binding humanity in webs of law.
Q 22Blake's design The Ancient of Days first appeared as the frontispiece to which 1794 work?
Europe a Prophecy
The Ancient of Days was the frontispiece of Europe a Prophecy (1794), showing a bearded creator crouched within a sun, reaching down to measure the void below.
Q 23Blake's 1795 print Newton shows the scientist drawing on a scroll with which instrument?
A compass
Newton (1795) shows the scientist bent over a scroll, drawing a geometric figure with a compass, absorbed in measurement and blind to the rock and the world around him.
Relief etching, which Blake called illuminated printing, raised text and design together on the copper plate; he used it for most of his later books, colouring the pages by hand.
Q 14How many poems were in the original Songs of Innocence, first printed in 1789?
23
The 1789 Songs of Innocence contained 23 poems; four of them, including The Little Girl Lost, were later moved into Songs of Experience, which followed in 1794.
Q 15Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) is subtitled 'Shewing the Two Contrary States' of what?
The Human Soul
The full title is Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul; Innocence is pastoral, Experience answers it with corruption and injustice.
Q 16'The Tyger' was written as the counterpart to which poem from Songs of Innocence?
The Lamb
The Tyger is the Experience counterpart of The Lamb from Songs of Innocence, asking outright 'Did he who made the Lamb make thee?'
Q 17What metre is 'The Tyger' largely written in?
Trochaic tetrameter
The Tyger is written mainly in trochaic tetrameter, four stressed-unstressed feet as in 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright', usually with the final unstressed syllable dropped.
Q 18Blake's title The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is an ironic reference to a book by which theologian?
Emanuel Swedenborg
Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (1758) supplied the title; Blake's Marriage, begun about 1790, attacks him directly, declaring that Swedenborg 'has not written one new truth'.
Q 19The most famous section of Blake's 1790s Marriage is a list of aphorisms known by what title?
Proverbs of Hell
The Proverbs of Hell, around 70 aphorisms such as 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom', are the Marriage's best-known section; Blake's Hell is unrepressed energy, not punishment.
Q 20Aldous Huxley took the title of which book from a line in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?
The Doors of Perception
Huxley's The Doors of Perception (1954) takes its title from Blake's line 'If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite'.
Q 24Blake's Newton is one of twelve large colour prints that also includes images of which Babylonian king?
Nebuchadnezzar
Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king crawling naked on all fours in his madness, is one of Blake's twelve large colour prints of 1795, the series that includes Newton.
Q 25Which sculptor's 1995 bronze Newton, after William Blake stands in the British Library piazza?
Eduardo Paolozzi
Eduardo Paolozzi's bronze Newton, after William Blake (1995) turns Blake's colour print into a three-dimensional seated figure bent over his measurements in the British Library piazza.
Q 26In which Sussex village did Blake spend his only three years outside London?
Felpham
Felpham, near Bognor on the Sussex coast, was Blake's home from September 1800 to 1803, the only years he spent away from London.
Q 27In 1800 Blake moved to a Sussex cottage to illustrate the works of which minor poet?
William Hayley
William Hayley, a popular but minor poet, brought Blake to Sussex in 1800 to engrave illustrations for his books; Blake came to resent him as wanting only 'the meer drudgery of business'.
Q 28A soldier's claim that Blake shouted what led to his 1804 trial for sedition?
Damn the king
The soldier John Scolfield swore Blake had said 'Damn the King' while ejecting him from his garden in August 1803; Blake was acquitted at Chichester Quarter Sessions in January 1804.
Q 29The poem now sung as the hymn 'Jerusalem' comes from the preface to which of Blake's epics?
Milton
He began the work in his Felpham cottage; its title page is dated 1804.
Q 30Who set 'And did those feet in ancient time' to music in 1916?
Hubert Parry
Hubert Parry composed the setting in March 1916 for a Fight for Right meeting at Queen's Hall, despite misgivings about the movement's jingoism; he later withdrew his support.