Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues were the concern of the people involved and no one else. The movement began during the 19th century and was advanced by hippies during the 1960s and early 70s.
The Adamites were a sect that rejected marriage. Pictured, they are being rounded up for their heretical views.
Title page from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), by Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist and proponent of free love.
Frontispiece to William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), which contains Blake's critique of Christian values of marriage. Oothoon (centre) and Bromion (left) are chained together, as Bromion has raped Oothoon and she now carries his baby. Theotormon (right) and Oothoon are in love, but Theotormon is unable to act, considering her polluted, and ties himself into knots of indecision.
The Oneida Community was a utopian group established in the 1840s, which practiced a form of free love. Postcard of the Oneida Community Mansion House from 1907.
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "human existence itself".
Portrait by Thomas Phillips (1807)
28 Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in an illustration of 1912. Blake was born here and lived here until he was 25. The house was demolished in 1965.
The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake's work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental Prophecies.
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (1786)