The Chimney Sweeper (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: William Blake
- First Published: 1789
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Children, Poverty or poor people, England or English people, Eighteenth century, City life, London, Orphans or orphanages, Romanticism, Boys, Cities or towns
The Poem
“The Chimney Sweeper,” a poem of six quatrains, accompanied by William Blake’s illustration, appeared in Songs of Innocence in 1789, the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution, and expresses Blake’s revolutionary fervor. It exposes the appalling conditions of the boys known as climbing boys, whose lot had been brought to public attention but had been only marginally improved by the 1788 Chimney Sweepers’ Act. Blake published a companion poem in Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1794.
The speaker is a young chimney sweeper,...
[The entire page is 1524 words long]
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