Which Romantic poet wrote 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'?

William Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Blake composed the work between 1790 and 1793, during a period of political and religious upheaval surrounding the French Revolution. It is not a conventional poem or narrative but an illustrated prophetic book combining prose, verse, aphorisms, and Blake’s own engraved designs. Blake printed the pages from etched plates and coloured many copies by hand with help from his wife, Catherine.

The title responds in part to the ideas of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, whose Heaven and Hell had appeared in Latin decades earlier. Blake transforms the opposition between heaven and hell into a provocative exploration of contraries, arguing that energy and reason, desire and restraint, must interact for human life and creativity to progress.

The work is especially famous for its “Proverbs of Hell,” paradoxical statements intended to challenge conventional morality. Blake also reinterprets Milton’s Paradise Lost, claiming Milton was unconsciously on “the Devil’s party.” Shelley, Coleridge, and Wordsworth wrote important Romantic poetry, but none authored this book.