William Blake: Complete Illuminated Books: The Complete Illuminated Books

About this book

"If you know Blakes poems youre getting only halfor rather none ofthe picture."The New York Times In his Illuminated Books William Blake combined text and imagery on a single page in a way that had not been done since the Middle Ages. For Blake religion and politics intellect and emotion mind and body were both unified and in conflict with each other: his work is expressive of his personal mythology and his methods of conveying it were integral to its meaning. There is no comparison with reading books such as Jerusalem America and Songs of Innocence and of Experience in Blakes own medium infused with his sublime and exhilarating colors. Tiny figures and forms dance among the lines of the text flames appear to burn up the page and dense passages of Biblical-sounding text are brought to a jarring halt by startling images of death destruction and liberation. Blakes hope that his books would obtain wide circulation was unfulfilled: some exist only in unique copies and none was printed in more than very small numbers. Now for the first time the plates from the William Blake Trusts Collected Edition have been brought together in a single volume with transcripts of the texts and an introduction by the noted scholar David Bindman. Includes: Jerusalem; Songs of Innocence and of Experience; All Religions are One; There is No Natural Religion; The Book of Thel; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Visions of the Daughters of Albion; America a Prophecy; Europe a Prophecy; The Song of Los Milton a Poem; The Ghost of Abel; On Homers Poetry and On Virgil; Laocoon; The First Book of Urizen; The Book of Ahania; The Book of Los. 400 color illustrations