William Blake’s Visions


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Songs of Innocence


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William Blake in Context


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William Blake, poet and artist, is a figure often understood to have 'created his own system'. Combining close readings and detailed analysis of a range of Blake's work, from lyrical songs to later myth, from writing to visual art, this collection of thirty-eight lively and authoritative essays examines what Blake had in common with his contemporaries, the writers who influenced him, and those he influenced in turn. Chapters from an international team of leading scholars also attend to his wider contexts: material, formal, cultural, and historical, to enrich our understanding of, and engagement with, Blake's work. Accessibly written, incisive, and informed by original research, William Blake in Context enables readers to appreciate Blake anew, from both within and outside of his own idiom.




The Complete Illuminated Books of William Blake (Unabridged - With All The Original Illustrations)


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This carefully crafted ebook: "The Complete Illuminated Books of William Blake (Unabridged - With All The Original Illustrations)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Taking his inspiration from the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, Blake invented the process of creating Illuminated Books. Between 1788 and early 1795 Blake published a series of fifteen Illuminated Books. He returned to creating Illuminated Books in 1804 when he began work on Milton (finished in 1808 or later) and Jerusalem. Blake committed himself in the minute particulars of producing his Illuminated Books. The process included creating a mental image, drawing, composing the design and poetry of the plate, engraving, printing, painting, compiling and selling. From inception to final production the color copy of Jerusalem was labored over for sixteen years. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.




William Blake


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In his illuminated books,William Blake combined his handwritten text with his exuberant imagery on pages the like of which had not been seen since the great decorated books of the Middle Ages. To read such books as Jerusalem, America and Songs of Innocence and of Experience in cold letterpress bears no comparison to seeing and reading them as Blake conceived them, infused with his sublime and exhilarating colours. At times 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. This edition, produced together with The William Blake Trust, contains all the pages of Blakes twenty or so illuminated books reproduced in true size, an appendix with all Blakes text set in type and an introduction by the noted Blake scholar, David Bindman. They can at last become part of the lives of all lovers of art and poetry.




Milton a Poem, and the Final Illuminated Works


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Milton is a difficult and cryptic poem for those uninitiated in the ways of Blake's allusive and allegorical style. In an introductory essay, the editors directly address the nature of the poem's complexity, demonstrate how Blake's methods set out to disconcert conventional concepts of time, space, and human identity, and suggest some ways readers coming to Milton for the first time can understand and enjoy the challenges it offers. The editors also present a plate-by-plate commentary on how the illustrations contribute to the creation of a composite, visual-verbal experience. The extensive notes to the newly-edited letterpress text will also assist readers through Milton, its central themes and its byways, its heights and its depths. An equally helpful introduction and notes are provided for the three shorter works. Scholars will find much new information in this volume.




The Early Illuminated Books


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"The nature of William Blake's genius and of his art is most completely expressed in his Illuminated Books. In order to give full and free expression to his vision Blake invented a method of printing that enabled him to created works in which words and images combine to form pages uniquely rich in content and beautiful in form. It is only through the pages as originally conceived and published by the poet himself that Blake's meaning can be fully experienced."--Publisher's description.







William Blake, 1757-1827


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