William Blake’s Songs of Innocence was first published in 1789.
The work began as a complete collection of 23 poems, including “The Lamb,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “The Little Black Boy,” and “The Tyger” was not among them—it appeared later in Songs of Experience. Blake created the poems through relief etching, then hand-coloured the printed pages and bound them into individually produced copies.
Blake’s method made the book both a literary collection and an illustrated art object. The images surrounding the poems were not mere decoration: they formed part of his effort to unite the “painter and the Poet.” The first printing produced approximately 17 or 18 copies, making surviving originals especially valuable.
The date 1794 is a frequent source of confusion. That was when Blake published Songs of Experience and began combining the two collections under the title Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. The question asks specifically about Songs of Innocence, whose first publication date is 1789.