Catherine Blake

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Catherine Blake (née Boucher) was the wife and close assistant of the poet, painter, and engraver William Blake. Born on 25 April 1762, she lived until 18 October 1831. Her support was vital to Blake’s life and work.

Catherine was the youngest child of market gardener William Boucher and Mary Davis. Described as a shy, modest young woman, she met Blake in Battersea in 1781 while he was recovering from an emotional setback. Their courtship was quick, and Blake asked her to marry him after she showed sympathy for his troubles. They wed on 18 August 1782 at St. Mary’s Church, Battersea. Catherine was illiterate at the time and signed the wedding contract with an X, a common practice for brides of that era.

Blake taught Catherine to read and write and to use his printing press. She became the steady foundation of his household and creative life, and she is often depicted in his art as an idealized woman—tall, slender, and with long legs. The couple had no children. Some later writers speculated that Blake considered bringing a surrogate mother into the marriage, but there is little evidence for this, and many biographers dispute the claim. In their later years, many described a happy partnership; in 1802 the writer William Hayley noted that they worked together, turning plates through a rolling press in their cottage.

William Blake died in 1827, and on his deathbed he drew a picture of Catherine and said, “you have ever been an angel to me.” After his death, Catherine lived with his admirer Frederick Tatham, working as a housekeeper and continuing to sell Blake’s works. When she died four years later, Tatham claimed that she had left him all of Blake’s works. He later destroyed some of them after adopting Irvingite beliefs, though there is little documentary evidence for this.

Catherine and William Blake are buried together at Bunhill Cemetery in London. Catherine played a central role in Blake’s work, helping with engraving, printing, and the coloring of illuminated books, as well as managing the household finances. Some sources link her to the figure of Enitharmon in Blake’s mythology, and she is described in Blake’s Milton as his “shadow of delight.”

In later years, Catherine has appeared in novels and plays about Blake, including Janet Adele Warner’s Other Sorrows, Other Joys (2001) and Tracy Chevalier’s Burning Bright (2007). She also features in detective stories by Keith Heller and in a stage play, In Lambeth, by Jack Shepherd, which was later adapted for television.