Hav­ing be­gun work on his epic po­ems “Mil­ton, a Po­em in Two Books” and “Je­ru­sa­lem,” on moving to Fel­pham, Sus­sex, in 1800, Blake com­plet­ed his Preface to Milton in 1804, ap­par­ent­ly while await­ing trial in Chi­ches­ter for high treason (he moved back to Lon­don af­ter be­ing ac­quit­ted).

Charles Parry set Blake’s Preface to Milton to mu­sic for a ral­ly of the “Fight for the Right” move­ment in Queen’s Hall. It be­came more gen­er­al­ly known as “Je­ru­sa­lem” when Par­ry con­duct­ed it in 1918 at a con­cert to mark the fi­nal stage in the Votes for Wo­men Cam­paign, af­ter which it was adopt­ed by the Na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Wo­men’s In­sti­tutes (and is still sung at meet­ings of WI Groups all over Britain). Ed­ward El­gar added an or­ches­tral score to Parry’s rather som­ber tune in time for the Leeds Fes­ti­val of 1922, turn­ing it in­to a pop­ular na­tion­al hymn which tra­di­tion­al­ly ends the last night of the an­nu­al Sir Henry Wood prom­en­ade con­certs at the Roy­al Al­bert Hall. This work al­so made an ap­pear­ance in the Acad­e­my Award win­ning mo­vie Char­i­ots of Fire (1981).

The theme is unique­ly Eng­lish, and there is an un­der­tone of 19th Cen­tu­ry pol­i­tics. The lyr­ics may refer to folk­lore that says Je­sus vis­it­ed Bri­tain as a teen­ag­er with Jo­seph of Ar­i­ma­thea, who was said to be a dis­tant rel­a­tive and had a stake in Cor­nish tin mines. How­ev­er, there is no his­tor­ic­al da­ta sup­port­ing this sto­ry.