Hayley, a prominent poet and patron, offered the Blakes a cottage at Felpham on the southern coast of West Sussex. In this rural environment, so different from his urban London, Blake worked for three years, until autumn 1803. This letter, written from London in early 1804 to report that engravings for Hayley's biography of the visionary British poet William Cowper (1731–1800) were not quite ready to be delivered, contains Blake's description of his work. "Engraving is Eternal work; the two plates are almost finish'd. . . . I curse & bless Engraving alternately, because it takes so much time & is so untractable, tho' capable of such beauty & perfection."
The engravings under discussion appeared in Hayley's Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper, Esq., 1803–4.