60 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
The house at 28 Broad Street, now Broadwick Street, has long since gone.
Q 02What was the trade of Blake's father, James?
Hosier
Blake was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy.
Q 03At what age did Blake leave school, after which his mother educated him at home?
10
He was instead enrolled in Henry Pars's drawing school in the Strand.
Q 04As a boy on Peckham Rye, Blake claimed to have seen a tree filled with what?
Angels
His father was ready to thrash him for lying until his mother intervened.
Q 05Which Old Testament prophet did the young Blake claim had visited him?
Ezekiel
He also described seeing God's face pressed against his window.
Q 06To which engraver was Blake apprenticed for seven years from 1772?
James Basire
His father paid £52.10 for the apprenticeship; Blake later added the man's name to a list of artistic enemies, then crossed it out.
Q 07Sketching the monuments of which building during his apprenticeship shaped Blake's Gothic style?
Westminster Abbey
A memorial to Blake and his wife was placed there in 1957.
Q 08In June 1780 Blake was swept along by a mob that stormed Newgate Prison during which upheaval?
The Gordon Riots
They were sparked by a bill easing sanctions on Roman Catholics and prompted the creation of the first police force.
Q 09Which institution's founding president, Joshua Reynolds, did the student Blake rebel against in 1779?
The Royal Academy
He nonetheless exhibited there six times between 1780 and 1808.
Q 10In which church did Blake marry Catherine Boucher in August 1782?
St Mary's, Battersea
He had met her in Battersea the year before, after a failed courtship, and won her over by asking 'Do you pity me?'
Q 11How did the illiterate Catherine sign her wedding contract?
With an X
Blake later taught her to read, write and print, and she coloured many of his books.
Q 12What was Blake's first poetry collection, published around 1783 after a dinner-party recital won him patrons?
Poetical Sketches
He performed his juvenile verse and the guests funded the printing.
Q 13What printing method did Blake invent in 1788, at the age of 31?
Relief etching
He called it illuminated printing and used it for most of his later books, hand-colouring the pages in watercolour.
Q 21Aldous Huxley took the title of which book from a line in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?
The Doors of Perception
Huxley's book in turn gave the rock band The Doors their name.
Q 22In Blake's mythology, which bearded figure embodies conventional reason and law?
Urizen
He is often shown with architect's tools or nets to trap people in webs of law.
Q 23Blake's design The Ancient of Days first appeared as the frontispiece to which 1794 work?
Europe a Prophecy
It shows a crouching figure with a compass, and the same idea reappeared in his print of Newton the next year.
Q 14How many poems were in the original Songs of Innocence, first printed in 1789?
23
Songs of Experience, with 26 poems, followed in 1794.
Q 15Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) is subtitled 'Shewing the Two Contrary States' of what?
The Human Soul
Innocence is mostly pastoral and happy; 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
Antithesis was a recurring theme in Blake's thinking.
Q 17What metre is 'The Tyger' largely written in?
Trochaic tetrameter
It is one of the most anthologised poems in English.
Q 18Which repeated image in Blake's poem 'London' suggests inescapable psychological control?
Mind-forged manacles
The poem also repeats the word 'chartered' for the streets and the Thames.
Q 19Blake's title The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is an ironic reference to a book by which theologian?
Emanuel Swedenborg
His Heaven and Hell had appeared in Latin 33 years earlier; Blake criticises him directly in the text.
Q 20The most famous section of Blake's 1790s Marriage is a list of aphorisms known by what title?
Proverbs of Hell
Blake's Hell is a source of unrepressed energy rather than a place of punishment.
Q 24Blake's 1795 print Newton shows the scientist drawing on a scroll with which instrument?
A compass
Eduardo Paolozzi's giant bronze of the image sits outside the British Library.
Q 25Blake's Newton is one of twelve large colour prints that also includes images of which Babylonian king?
Nebuchadnezzar
The prints were made between 1795 and 1805.
Q 26Which sculptor's 1995 bronze Newton, after William Blake stands in the British Library piazza?
Eduardo Paolozzi
The bronze translates Blake's monotype into three dimensions.
Q 27In which Sussex village did Blake spend his only three years outside London?
Felpham
He was born in Soho and died off the Strand.
Q 28In 1800 Blake moved to a Sussex cottage to illustrate the works of which minor poet?
William Hayley
He came to resent his patron as interested only in 'the meer drudgery of business'.
Q 29In 1803 Blake was tried for sedition after a scuffle with a soldier who claimed he had shouted what?
Damn the king
He was cleared at the Chichester assizes.
Q 30The 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.