| 1757 | (28 November) Blake born at 28 Broad Street, Soho, London |
| 1766 | Sees angels on Peckham Rye |
| 1782 | Marries Catherine Boucher in Battersea |
| 1784 | Death of father, opens his own printshop |
| 1787 | Death of beloved brother Robert, aged 19 |
| 1789 | Fall of the Bastille in Paris. Engraves Songs of Innocence |
| 1790 | Writing The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Moves to Hercules Buildings, Lambeth |
| 1793 | Engraves Visions of the Daughters of Albion |
| 1794 | Songs of Innocence and of Experience |
| 1800 | Moves to cottage in Felpham, Sussex |
| 1803 | Returns to London, to 17 South Molton Street |
| 1804 | Tried for sedition and treason at Chichester Begins to write and engrave Jerusalem |
| 1807 | Quarrels with Cromek |
| 1809 | His Exhibition and Descriptive Catalogue, criticized as ‘insane’ Beginning of Blake’s lost decade |
| 1810 | Engraves Milton, with the hymn ‘Jerusalem’ in Preface |
| 1811 | Article by Crabb Robinson, ‘William Blake, Painter, Poet and Religious Dreamer’ published in Germany |
| 1817 | Aged sixty |
| 1818 | Befriended by the young painter John Linnell |
| 1820 | Finishes Jerusalem, his last Prophetic Book, and illustrates Virgil’s Pastorals |
| 1821 | Moves to 3 Fountain Court, Strand |
| 1824 | Adopted by his young disciples, ‘the Ancients’ (including Samuel Palmer, George Richmond, Frederick Tatham) |
| 1825 | Interviewed by Crabb Robinson, and visited by Coleridge |
| 1826 | Illustrates the Book of Job and Pilgrim’s Progress |
| 1827 | Starts to illustrate Dante’s Divina Comedia Blake dies on 12 August |
| 1828 | Alexander Gilchrist born at Newington Green, London Anne Burrows born in Gower Street, London |
| 1830 | Alan Cunningham’s Lives of the British Painters |
| 1847 | D.G. Rossetti buys Blake’s manuscript notebook |
| 1851 | Alexander Gilchrist and Anne Burrows married |
| 1855 | Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Etty RA The Gilchrists meet Thomas and Jane Carlyle The Gilchrists meet Samuel Palmer |
| 1856 | The Gilchrists move to No. 6 Cheyne Row, Chelsea |
| 1859 | Anne Gilchrist, ‘Our Nearest Relation’, in All the Year Round |
| 1861 | (March) The Gilchrists meet the Rossettis (November) Death of Alexander Gilchrist |
| 1862 | Anne Gilchrist moves to Shottermill, near Haslemere, Surrey |
| 1863 | (October) Publication of Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of Blake |
| 1871 | Anne Gilchrist and family leave for America |
| 1880 | Publication of the second edition of Life of Blake |
| 1881 | (July) Death of Beatrice Gilchrist |
| 1883 | Publication of Anne Gilchrist’s Life of Mary Lamb |
| 1885 | (November) Death of Anne Gilchrist |
