William Blake

Volume 1 and 2 of a two-volume scholarly edition of the writings of William Blake. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

One of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic and visionary. His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical Songs of Innocence and their counterpoint Experience - which juxtapose poems such as 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger', and 'The Blossom' and 'The Sick Rose' - to highly elaborate, apocalyptic works, such as The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. Throughout his life Blake drew on a rich heritage of philosophy, religion and myth, to create a poetic worlds illuminated by his spiritual and revolutionary beliefs that have fascinated, intrigued and enchanted readers for generations.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was created early in Blake's series of illuminated books, each of which was presented by him as an attractive work of art made entirely by his own hand. Written principally in prose, The Marriage represents Blake's first full-scale attempt to present his philosophic message. In it he expresses his extreme humanist views through a system in which Angels and Devils change places, Good becomes Evil, Heaven is Hell. The 27 colour plates are the work of Blake himself, with commentary and introduction by Sir Geoffrey Keynes.

Blake was one of the finest craftsmen of his time, an artist for whom art and poetry were inextricably linked. He was an indepedent and rebellious thinker, who abhorred pretention and falsity in others. His Songs of Innocence are products of this innocent imagination untainted by worldliness, while the Songs of Experience resulted from his feelings of indignation and pity for the sufferings of mankind. The Songs of Innocence and Experience , containing some of Blake's finest and best-loved poems, are presented here in the form which best satisfied the high expectations of his poetic and artistic aspirations. The fifty-four plates which Blake originallly etched and coloured by hand are faithfully reproduced with the same delicacy and dimensions as the artist created them.