One Sunday in August 1827, late into the night, William Blake sat in his bed, completing a sketch of his wife Catherine. The sketch was the last time Blake put pencil to paper, as he died shortly thereafter (King 228). Until his final moments, William Blake was a man of intense vision and artistic strength, creating some of the most powerful and recognizable pieces of poetry and art to date. His works were the product of his eccentricity, religious fervor, socio-political progressivism and the industrial era of London in which he spent his life. William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 in his parents' home at 28 Broad Street in London. . He was born the son of a haberdasher to Catherine and James Blake as the family's third child. Being the son of a merchant, Blake grew up in a home whose socio-economic status was somewhere between poor working class and able-bodied "middle types", as dubbed by Daniel Defoe (King 2). From an early age, William displayed a fiery temper and a very stubborn attitude compared to that of his classmates. He was strictly against every rule and regulation, so much so that his father decided not to send him to school. His attitude and temperament were most likely influenced by his position as the third son in the family, with his older brother John seen as the favorite. This favoritism deeply troubled him (Kings 6). In addition to this, Blake, from an early age, had visions that were called “epiphanic” (Kings 7). For example, at age four, Blake was frightened after seeing, as Morsberger described, “God peering at him through a window” and a “tree full of angels and angels with haymakers in the field.” Morsber... middle of paper... in a “stabbing pain in the stomach”. The fatal illness that befell Blake continued until his final days, during which he worked on another of his most famous, if incomplete, engraved works of art: an illustration of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Two days before his death, on August 10, 1827, Blake fell completely bedridden. He continued to grow weaker and weaker, all the while continuing his work of engraving and drawing, with "his last shillings spent on sending for a pencil". Blake died on August 12, 1827, after telling his wife Catherine that she was a good wife, and then drawing a hasty portrait of her, his last work on this Earth (King 228). Blake left his wife Catherine with nothing but the engravings and manuscripts not sold or destroyed by his executor, and his paltry reputation as an artist and writer..