In 1809 the little-known artist William Blake held an exhibition of 16 paintings in a private house in Soho in the west end of London. Works inspired by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and John Milton's "Paradise Lost" sat alongside biblical scenes and Arthurian legend. The exhibition was not a success; the only review in the press was extremely unfavourable and few of the public came. One of those who did was the poet Charles Lamb, who later described the pictures as 'hard, dry, yet with grace', and the catalogue that accompanied the show as 'mystical and full of vision'. It is this catalogue that Tate Publishing are once again making available. In it, the scale and range of Blake's ambition are made plain, along with his theories on painting, his unsparing critiques of other artists and some extraordinary insights into the working of his mind. The only detailed writing on art that remains to us by Blake, it throws light on all his subsequent artistic enterprises, including the illuminated books for which he is perhaps most famous. Part commentary and part manifesto, his catalogue is as radical as it is in places eccentric (he claims at one point to have been transported in a "vision" back to the classical world). Fully illustrated in colour with reproductions of surviving works originally in the exhibition, the book includes an illuminating essay by leading authority on British art Martin Myrone, Lead Curator of Pre-1800 Art at Tate Britain, making it an essential purchase for all of those wanting to know more.
William Blake is one of England's most original artists whose works aim to liberate imaginative energies. This volume contains his greatest writings and a generous selection from the Prophetic Books including Milton and Jerusalem.
Since its first publication in 1965, this collection has been widely hailed as the best available text of William Blake's poetry and prose. It is now expanded to include a new foreword by Harold Bloom, his definitive statement on Blake's greatness.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand 'And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour' William Blake wrote some of the most moving and memorable verse in the English language. Deeply committed to visionary and imaginative experience, yet also fiercely engaged with the turbulent politics of his era, he is now recognised as a major contributor to the Romantic Movement. This edition presents Blake's poems in their literary categories and genres to which they belong: his much-loved lyrics, ballads, comic and satirical verse, descriptive and discursive poems, verse epistles, and, finally, his remarkable 'prophetic' poems, including the whole of his two diffuse epics, Milton and Jerusalem. Blake's poetry is intellectually challenging as well as formally inventive, and this edition has a substantial critical introduction which places his ideas in the contemporary context of the Enlightenment and the artistic reaction against its key assumptions.
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.
Every page is a window open in Heaven ... interwoven designs companion the poems, and gold and yellow tints diffuse themselves over the page like summer clouds. The poems [of Song of Innocence] are the morning song of Blake's genius.' - W.B. Yeats'Blake sang of the ideal world, of the truth of the intellect, and of the divinity of imagination ... The only writer to have written songs for children with the soul of a child ... he holds, in my view, a unique position because he unites intellectual sharpness with mystic sentiment.' - James JoyceSong of Innocence and of Experience is a rare and wonderful book, its seeming simplicity belying its visionary wisdom. Internationally recognised as a masterpiece of English literature, it also occupies a key position in the history of western art.This unique edition of the work allows Blake to communicate with his readers as he intended, reproducing Blake's own illumination and lettering from the finest existing example of the original work. In this way readers can experience the mystery and beauty of Blake's poems as he first created them, discovering for themselves the intricate webs of symbol and meaning that connects word and image.Each poem is accompanied by a literal transcription, and the volume is introduced by the renowned historian and critic, Richard Holmes. The poems are narrated by novelist and critic, Adam Mars-Jones.This beautiful edition of Song of Innocence and of Experience will be essential for those familiar with Blake's work, but also offers an ideal way into his visionary world for those encountering Blake for the first time.
This selection makes an excellent introduction to the poetry of William Blake (1757-1827). It ranges from his early lyrics, including the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, to the restless visions of his late prophetic books. A monumental genius and inventor, on his own in the history of poetry as Leonardo is in that of painting, Blake's great gift to his readers - through his war against tyranny, his active belief in the supremacy of human imagination - is to extend dramatically our sense of the everyday world.
This carefully crafted ebook: "Songs of Experience (Illuminated Manuscript with the Original Illustrations of William Blake)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Songs of Experience is the second part of Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (first published in 1794), an expansion of Blake's first illuminated book Songs of Innocence. The poems and artwork were reproduced by copperplate engraving and colored with washes by hand. Blake republished Songs of Innocence and Experience several times, often changing the number and order of the plates. The spellings, punctuation and capitalizations are those of the original Blake manuscripts. 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. CONTENT: Introduction Earth's Answer The Clod and the Pebble Holy Thursday The Little Girl Lost The Little Girl Found The Chimney-Sweeper Nurse's Song The Sick Rose The Fly The Angel The Tiger My Pretty Rose Tree Ah, Sunflower The Lily The Garden of Love The Little Vagabond London The Human Abstract Infant Sorrow A Poison Tree A Little Boy Lost A Little Girl Lost A Divine Image A Cradle Song The Schoolboy To Tirzah
The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This monumental volume presents for the first time ever the complete works of William Blake, featuring all of the poetry and the entire corpus of engravings and paintings, as well as the usual Delphi bonus material. (58MB Version 1) Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles * Beautifully illustrated with numerous images relating to Blake's life and works * Concise introductions to the poetry and other works * Images of how the poetry books were first printed, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the poems * Famous poetry collections like SONGS OF INNOCENCE are fully illustrated with the text * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the poetry * Easily locate the poems you want to read * Includes a special 'Plates' section with Blake's complete engravings, paintings and illustrations - spend hours exploring Blake's artistic genius in over 1,100 images! * Features two biographies - discover Blake's literary life * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres CONTENTS: The Poetry and Prose Books POETICAL SKETCHES AN ISLAND IN THE MOON ALL RELIGIONS ARE ONE THERE IS NO NATURAL RELIGION TIRIEL SONGS OF INNOCENCE THE BOOK OF THEL THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION AMERICA A PROPHECY EUROPE A PROPHECY THE FIRST BOOK OF URIZEN SONGS OF EXPERIENCE THE BOOK OF LOS THE SONG OF LOS THE BOOK OF AHANIA THE FOUR ZOAS MILTON A POEM JERUSALEM: THE EMANATION OF THE GIANT ALBION SONGS AND BALLADS FROM BLAKE'S NOTEBOOK (1793) SATIRIC VERSES AND EPIGRAMS FROM BLAKE'S NOTEBOOK UNCOLLECTED WORKS The Poems LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER The Plates CATALOGUE OF VISUAL WORKS The Biographies WILLIAM BLAKE by Irene Langridge WILLIAM BLAKE by Charles Gardner
Commissioned in 1824 — just three years before his death — Blake's sublime watercolors are peerless interpretations of Dante's vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven and range from finished pieces to rough sketches.
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