SOURCE: Fox, Nicols. “Romantic Inclinations.” In Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives, pp. 41-73. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002.

In the following essay, Fox illustrates how the Romantic poets protested against industrialization while sympathizing with Luddites and other workers displaced by emerging technology.

There is an intriguing gap in the life of poet, painter, mystic, and eccentric William Blake. No one is quite certain what he was doing between the years 1811 and 1817. No major works were published during that time, and mentions of him are rare. It is almost as if he had vanished. There was gossipy speculation that he had been committed to an asylum for madness, but there is no evidence for that either. Eventually he reappeared, but the absence remains an enduring puzzle.

To someone interested in the Luddite uprising, those particular dates leap from the page. The...