Book Description
The six essays in this volume represent a range of approaches to Blake's unique achievement, including technical assessment of his printing methods, contextualization of his political ideas, and theoretical treatments of his use of language. They represent the range of approaches now at the forefront of Blake criticism. The Huntington's copy of Visions of the Daughters of Albion is reproduced in full and in color. ... Read more

Book Description
This short study draws on Blake's complete writings, his poetry and his prose. It offers a lively and perceptive account of his thought, ranging from his philosophy, his critique of existing society and culture, to his vision of a free world. Marshall presents Blake as a forerunner of modern anarchism and social ecology, and reveals the light which shines behind the misty mountain range (ahem) of his symbolism and mythology. ... Read more

Book Description
Journey back to the 1700s to meet one of the most fascinating people in history. Dreamer, craftsman, poet, madman, and genius — William Blake. Born in 1757 in London, as a boy he apprenticed as an engraver and began a career that would include masterpieces of art.

Blake lived during times of incredible change and upheaval, including the Gordon Riots and the French Revolution. Spiritualism and the allure of magic were being replaced by a belief in rationalism. Blake celebrated the beauty of small things. His work showed, “…a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower….” [William Blake] Yet, with the noise and dirt of mills (factories), the Industrial Revolution was drowning out a quiet, rural way of life. The value of things made carefully by hand was being lost.

At the same time, the printing press was making it possible for more and more people to read. The rise of printed books and book illustration was revolutionary and Blake was part of it.

On the 250th anniversary of Blake’s birth, master storyteller Michael Bedard brings this Renaissance man and his times to vivid life in this biography that is lavishly illustrated with Blake’s work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Blake-Understood
I always wanted to figure out what was behind the art and poems of William Blake and I think this author has a special way of getting the reader to that exact information.It is kind of like an Ed Burns documentary but added to that is the joy that the author feels for his subject. That joy added to the rapture of Blake's life leads the reader to splendor.

Blake's Alive!
This is much more than a kids biography. This is a well-organized, handsomely-presented full read on Master Blake. Yes it's a perfect introduction for someone, but I also found this to be a superb supplementary book for the William Blake fan. I was impressed throughout -- especially with the loads of illustrations herein. Killer lil Blakebook.

Great Blake book for all to experience
Wonderful summary of Blakes life geared towards young adults but also helpful for older readers. Great illustrations and beautiful inside cover illustrations. A real joy to read and own!!!

AJ FAL ... Read more

Book Description
William Blake is known as one of the 19th centuries greatest poets and prophets of the imagination. In this volume numerous critics examine his poetry, including the titles Jerusalem, Milton, and The Four Zoas.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts presents critical essays that reflect a variety of schools of criticism on the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature. Each volume also contains an introductory essay by Harold Bloom, critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index. ... Read more

Book Description
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of poems by William Blake. This is an important publication for those who are fans of the writings of William Blake, and should not be passed up by students or scholars of poetry. Make sure to add this edition to your William Blake poems and continue discover the beauty and mystery to Blake's writings for longtime fans and for those discovering his work for the first time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

gem
Gorgeous poetry and illustrations by Blake. A must have for your library and a treasure to share with your children.

The Other Blake
Sorry, all, I'm not much of a poetry fan. I like "Tyger," "Garden of Love," and a few others, but I can't add to the scholarship on his verse.

I am, however, fascinated by his use of relief etching in creating these pages. It's a rare process even now, and was revealed to Blake in a vision (plus a lot of painstaking experimentation). It's the process by which he shaped each letter, reversed, in the printing plate, plus much of the 'illumination' on each page.

The preface is vague and the reproduced images are hard to read, but Blake printed the lettering and line work on each page, then hand-decorated with watercolors. The preface says that Blake went on to create color printing processes, but what they were or whether they're used here is not explicit. I tend to think not, unless a few pages were printed with one or two more plates to emphasize the dark areas. If these illustrations really are true size, then inking on the plate would have been tedious, imprecise, and would not have given the results seen here.

There's much to say about his illustration. That includes an odd conflict, between figures fully drawn even under clothing and the androgyny or sexlessness of so many, an ambiguity that appears in the poems as well. I'll leave that commentary to others, though. The thing that impresses me about these editions is their artistic intensity. Each individual copy of the book was printed and decorated on demand, for a specific buyer. Blake had full control of every part of the creation, the words, images, and reproduction.

It is a rare mind that can master visual and verbal arts, both, then the craft of creating the book that carries them. Perhaps I miss parts of the presentation, but I very much admire the parts that I understand. Four stars because better reproduction would have served his visual art and craft much better.

//wiredweird

poems of perspective from childhood and adulthood
William Blake is known for some very mystical hard-to-understand poetry, but his "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience" is very different from that other work. Here in beautiful, almost child-like simplicity, he describes happy things like childhood and purity, as well as the darker realities of corruption and disillusionment. These poems are always spiritual and lyrical, full of heart and soul. The style is simple, yes, but the words and metaphors are profound and so is the wisdom, like in "The Human Abstract":

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor;
And mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Blake's most popular illuminated works in a fine edition
These are Blake's most popular and accessible works, by far.The poems combined with the wonderful drawings make powerful and memorable statements that stay in your heart and mind.Several, such as "The Tyger", "The Chimney Sweeper", and "London", are very well known.Each of us has our own personal favorites and love turning to them again and again.

One of issues in buying an edition of these works is that they exist in a variety of colorings, and orders.I would recommend this edition for several reasons. The selection of the King's College Copy is one of the most uniformly delightful or the copies Blake (or his wife) colored.Also, the reproduction is of very high quality.Each plate is on a right hand page with the text in print on the left hand page (in case you have problem reading the plate).Even thought the book is in a large format, the plates are reproduced in their actual size (which is surprisingly modest).

There are also a dozen plates provided from other editions.However, I would recommend that you pick up other editions based on other copies.The variety of schemes Blake used in coloring the plates is quite interesting and, well, illuminating.

The second half of the book is commentary on the 54 plates of this copy.There is an introductory essay and a list of works cited in the commentary.

It really is a beautiful reproduction and a joy to have on my shelf.

The Oxford Paperbacks edition is superb
There are larger, more luxurious graphical editions of Blake's two most popular works but the Oxford SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE is perhaps the most affordable and convenient.

After a short introductory piece which makes the reader expect a pastoral mood, SONGS OF INNOCENCE opens with "The Shepherd", and the reader is immediately acquainted with Blake's style: deceptively simple, but filled with metaphor and allusion. Many of the poems speak of the solace of Christianity, but Blake shows a more universal and tolerant tranquility found through appreciation of simple human virtues. In "The Divine Image", he writes: "And all must love the human form, / in heathen, turk, or jew. / Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, / there God is dwelling too."

Even within SONGS OF EXPERIENCE, the most pessimistic and cynical half, Blake maintains a his childlike style in order to bring the truth of human experience to anyone at all, young and old. In "A Poison Tree" he writes: "I was angry with my friend: / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow", concisely summarising the effects of pride and ill-will on one's soul.

Blake was by profession an engraver, and his engravings for SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE are so closely bound to the text of the poems that a photocopy edition is really the only way to enjoy the poems as they were meant. In this paperback edition, the original engraving can be seen along side a typeset text, presented in a size large enough that the words can be relatively easily made out and, perhaps more importantly, the reader can see Blake's mythological characters. These personages, such as Urizen and Lothos, are key to understanding Blake's larger metaphysical work, for which the Songs present a good introduction.

This edition is especially valuable as it contains a photocopy of the engraving of "A Divine Image", a poem intended for SONGS OF EXPERIENCE which Blake subsequently left out because of its savage pessimism. The poem survives on an uncolored plate which is not found within many collections of the poet's work.

If you are intrigued by poets who transcend mere beautiful words to present a complete worldview, Blake is certainly worth reading. The Oxford Paperbacks edition is, in my opinion, the best place to get started with this deep and tricky, but fulfilling and fascinating poet. ... Read more

Book Description
A poet, painter, and engraver, William Blake died in 1827 in obscurity. Yet he has become one of the most anthologized writers in English and one of the most collected British artists. His urge to create masterpieces of revelation has left complex (and sometimes bizarre) works of written and visual art. The essays in this Companion and a chronology, guides to further reading, and glossary of Blake's terms identify the key points of departure into Blake's diverse world. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

An Affordable and Indispensable Volume of Drawings
Published in 1970 this Dover Book DRAWINGS OF WILLIAM BLAKE: 92 PENCIL STUDIES is still available and remains at a very affordable price.Compiled and commented on by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, this resource volume very completely addresses the important pencil drawings Blake made throughout his artistic career.

Though many of these drawings have been published before as Blake's illustrations for 'The Book of Job' and 'The Divine Comedy', this collection which spans his entire career expressing his own personal symbolism, his versions of the great myths, his allegories and his 'grotesques', many in print for the first time. Blake's spiritual nature, and his ability to express it in both poetry and paintings, here includes some wonderfully refined full frontal male and female nudes.But in the end it is his elusive, mysticalvision drawings that will register with the reader fully familiar with the life of William Blake.In Blake's words 'Let a Man who has made a Drawing go on & on & he will produce a Picture or Painting, but if he chooses to leave it before he has spoil'd it, he will do a Better Thing'.

The quality of paper in this book is not of the highest, but it matters little.In fact the gradual yellowing that occurs in rag of this sort weds the content with the image even more mysteriously!Grady Harp, February 06 ... Read more

Amazon.com
Of William Blake, William Wordsworth said, "There is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott." Blake was, after all, known to report on his "conversations" with such dead notables as the great Milton. He felt no constraint in sharing the bold content of his vivid imagination. "Once [he] was walking down Cheapside with a friend," Alexander Gilchrist writes. "Suddenly he took off his hat and bowed low. 'What did you do that for?' 'Oh! that was the Apostle Paul.'" This full-length study of the visionary artist and poet, first published in 1863, is credited with bringing to light not only the unique genius of William Blake, but his body of work.

When Gilchrist wrote this critical biography, the world was largely ignorant of William Blake (1757-1827). Most of his works--visual and poetic--were "never published at all ... [and] Blake's poems were ... not even printed in his life-time; simply engraved by his own laborious hand." The first-edition printing of Songs of Innocence and Experience, for example, consisted of slightly more than 20 copies. Nevertheless, Blake was not spared the ironic fate of so many posthumously honored artists. At the time of Gilchrist's writing, "Blake drawings, Blake prints fetch prices which would have solaced a life of penury, had their producer received them."

Of course, it's no surprise that The Life of William Blake is drenched in the style peculiar to the late 19th century, as if proclaimed in an echo chamber where lofty and pious tones vie with the sentimental. Still, who isn't drawn into the central tragedy of Blake's life? He had the capacity to become a great public and religious poet, but instead turned in upon himself, gaining neither reputation nor a following. Blake was simply not of his time, "partly by choice; partly from the necessities of imperfect education."

Although in paperback, this volume suggests antiquity--the type fonts are reminiscent of those used in the dusty, old tomes found in Grandma's attic. Chapter titles reflect the 19th-century sensibility ("A Boy's Poems," "Struggle and Sorrow," "Mad or Not Mad?"). The 39 chapters also reveal Gilchrist's exhaustive study of Blake's life. His report of Blake's first vision at the age of 8 reveals the 19th-century tone: "Sauntering along, the boy looks up and sees a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars." Unabridged and illustrated with 40 black-and-white photographs of Blake's engravings, this first critical biography will interest the Blake scholar wishing to add a more period feel to his or her body of research (100 years separate Gilchrist from his subject), as well as the Blake fan in the mood for a courtly and doting guide. --Hollis Giammatteo Book Description
Despite the flow of books on William Blake, the first full-length life, published in 1863, remains essential to those who would understand one of the greatest of Englishmen, for the author, Alexander Gilchrist, had one advantage which has been denied to his successors - he could still find people who had known Blake, in his room looking out over the Thames or on Hampstead Heath, and who could report later, in the words of George Richmond: "I felt like I was walking on air, and as if I had been talking to the Prophet Isaiah." These personal reminiscences give the book an actuality which few of the later ones have touched. The second and best edition of Gilchrist's biography, upon which this edition is based, originally appeared in 1880, and has long been out of print and obtainable only at a price which placed it out of the reach of the general reader and ordinary student. Modern research, which has done so much to throw light on certain aspects of the life of William Blake, has also shown that Gilchrist was sometimes in error in the facts he recorded; these have been corrected and, for the benefit of the student, the editor has supplied a section of notes amplifying the text (including some information not previously published) which should also act as a guide to those who wish to proceed further. The many quotations have been brought into line with the standard text of Blake's writings edited by Mr. Geoffrey Keynes, and the book is illustrated with Blake's woodcuts to Virgil, executed in 1821, which are generally accounted among his finest works. Altogether this new edition of the standard Life of Blake should prove a fitting testament to the great man and his work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Rumor From Another World
Gilchrist had two things going for him as Blake's first biographer. He remains the only one of them all who actually got to talk to people who knew Blake, who were friends with he and his wife. Secondly, he was alert enough to recognize Blake's genius despite the neglect with which it continued to be treated even as Gilchrist wrote the book. Just as Harold Bloom suggests that Emerson proved his own genius by being the first to recognize Whitman's, the same ought to be said of Gilchrist. Throughout Gilchrist's account, he cites conversations and letters exchanged with various friends of Blake, from Samuel Palmer to Crabb Robinson and others. Palmer serves up a gorgeous and sensitive portrait of Blake in a letter to Gilchrist, while Gilchrist's copious quoting of Robinson's talks with Blake are ceaselessly fascinating.

To read this first of countless Blake biographies before one of the more recent ones is to strap yourself into a time machine and launch from one world to entirely another. Writing in the 1860s, Gilchrist's language reflects just how jaded we've become over time. Full of purple but no less delightful prose, Gilchrist's often adoring book stops at nothing to ensure the sanctity of his subject. One of Blake's early and comparatively minor "Song" poems from the "Poetical Sketches" is described as possessing "shy evanescent tints and aroma as of pressed rose-leaves."

Yet for all the book's haughtiness, it is Gilchrist's fascinating renunciation of criticism that most distinguishes him from we post-moderns: "Criticism is idle. How analyze a violet's perfume, or dissect the bloom on a butterfly's wing?" It would be a long way to Freud, Brooks, Frye, Vendler and Bloom. While Gilchrist often goes to boring lengths in describing Blake's paintings and engravings (as in the tedious "Supplementary" chapter at the end), it is a good thing he did decide to lay off the criticism, as Gilchrist often reveals a complete and astonishing inability to fathom so much of Blake's work. He repeatedly surrenders to the abstractness of Blake's epics, condemning Jerusalem's language as "words empty of meaning to all but him who uttered them" and says of Blake's "Milton" that "few are the readers who will ever penetrate beyond the first page or two."

But it is the book's charm that designates it a literary monument. "Fully to appreciate the poetry as the lad Blake composed in the years 1768-77. let us call to mind the dates at which first peeped above the horizon the cardinal lights which people our modern poetic heavens," Gilchrist carries on at the book's onset. The author often blurs the line between eloquence and coherence early on, but soon, as if the immensity of Gilchrist's project gradually wore him down, the book assumes a far more pedestrian tone and becomes all the more wrenching a read because of it.

The book's most powerful moment comes in a chapter called "Personal Details" which, if you can sift through Gilchrist's romantic elaborations, makes for a singularly moving document of Blake, the man and the artist, including such meticulously vivid observations as to his clothes, the shape of his head and nose, the look in his eyes, the way he carried his five-foot-six frame. "his clothes were threadbare," Gilchrist writes, "and his gray trousers had worn black and shiny in front, like a mechanic's. Out of doors, he was more particular, so that his dress did not, in the streets of London, challenge attention either way." These details along with those offered by many of the Blake acquaintances Gilchrist was able to interview throughout the book make it an indispensable document of a deeply poignant and fascinating life.
... Read more

Book Description
Poetical Sketches was the first and only volume of William Blake’s poetry printed in his lifetime. Long unavailable in its entirety as a single volume, this edition is reproduced from an extremely rare copy of the original 1783 book that contains corrections to the printed text handwritten by Blake himself. The writings range from work written in Blake’s twelfth year up to that of his twentieth and are all stamped with his unique vision. This beautiful book also contains an introduction by Robin Hamlyn, who considers the history of the book itself and the place it has in Blake’s pursuit of fame.Download Description
Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening, Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown Put on, and smile upon our evening bed! Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew. ... Read more

Book Description
This is the most accessible introduction available to one of the greatest British artists. The art of William Blake unites visionary simplicity with profound complexity of thought. In this illuminating new study, illustrated throughout in colour, Raymond Lister provides an engaging and lucid approach to Blake's paintings, fully alive to their infinite power of suggestion and refreshingly unfettered by polemic. The biographical introduction, making extensive use of Blake's writings and of contemporary accounts of him, traces the vicissitudes of this absolutely individual artist's life; his very human nature is revealed, no less than his boundless creative energies. The seventy-five colour plates represent the whole span of Blake's working life and all the major areas of his art: his biblical pictures, his allegorical subjects and his illuminated books, which he wrote, engraved and decorated himself. The detailed commentary to each plate explores as much of his symbolism as is readily comprehensible, and explains his often idiosyncratic techniques. ... Read more

Book Description
Focusing on the Songs of Innocence and Experience, this book uses close analysis and interpretation of individual poems to build the reader's confidence when approaching Blake's lyrics and meeting his thought. Chapters on innocence and experience, the natural world, society and personal relationships move from the lyrics and take the reader on towards the later and longer poems, Blake's "Prophetic Books". In the second part, information about Blake's life and work and a comparison of three important critical views, as well as useful suggestions for further reading, provide a bridge towards further study. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Blake's universal origins similar to those of Gnostics
Anyone else notice the parallels between Blake's illuminated text and the universal origins described in the recently uncovered scrolls contained in the Nag Hammadi Library, the ones that are the oldest origional records ofthe words of Jesus Christ in the Secret Book of James? From the ignorantsplitting from the undescribable origional of the lesser and jealous"God" (arguably the Old Testament's Jehova) to the metaphor ofthe chain, it seems as if they could be mirror images. The interesting partis that the Nag Hammadi library was discovered in 1947- the same year theDead Sea Scrolls were found-- and has been dated back to approximately 50AD. Almost all other Gnostic writings had long been destroyed by the earlyChurch. Read into this what you may, but Blake most probably never readthis particular text. Personally, I take this as proof of at leastauthenticity, and moreover that Blake was in greater alignment, more likeChrist, if you will, than most humans so far. I bet he could make a killersalad.

Incredible depiction of the rise of the human body
Blake's "The [First] Book of Urizen" is an incredible poetical and visual depiction of the rise of the flesh and the implications of being bound to our bodies. Particulalry interesting because the book manages todepict an occurance that, according to Blake himself, is impossible todescribe. The use of the metaphorical tool of a mythology by the book comesas close as one could expect from a peice of writing to achieving thisdepiction (the rest, appropriately enough, is up to our imagination). It isthis undertaking of what seems to be an impossible task (that of attemptingto represent the metaphysical through the physical) that shows this poem'sbravery.

Excellent reproduction of color plates and text
A small book but of good value. Very useful to see the full color plates that Blake had designed along with the text. The combination of the two increased my enjoyment of the work. The poetry is a bit obtuse and requires multiple readings to really extract what Blake was saying. ... Read more

Book Description
22 engravings reproduced from proofs of the first edition and interpreted by a renowned Blake scholar. ... Read more

Book Description
For thousands of years humans have adorned themselves. Adornment figures among the constellation of traits that signify the arrival of modern human behavior in the archaeological record. Wherever they ventured, wherever they lived, people have made art and adornments to accompany them in life and death.

In this book, artist William Morris celebrates this ancient and universal human quality and continues his exploration of the themes of origin and myth that permeate all his work. At first glance, these glass sculptures signal a striking departure from Morris's oeuvre of canopic jars, animal vessels, assorted artifacts, and imaginative burial installations. Here Morris depicts the people only imagined before. He has put flesh on the bones, and covered the bodies with costumes, jewelry, headdresses, and tattoos. These figures spring forth full of vibrant life in the present, rather than recalling a distant past. The faces and artifacts evoke and sometimes blend elements of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, tracing the global migrations of distant ancestors. Morris aims less for realism than for an essence of ethnicity.

For more than 20 years, in a career that has brought Morris to the forefront of the modern Studio Glass movement, he has perfected a repertoire of techniques that virtually no other American glass artist can equal. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Conservation scientist Joyce H. Townsend is the Tate Museum's answer to coroner Gus Grissom on TV's CSI. Only instead of solving murders, she sleuths out the violence done to great art. In this book, she and her colleagues explain the horrors time, faded pigments, and dumb owners have visited on Blake's paintings, use a slew of high-tech techniques to deduce his methods and open our eyes to his original intentions. If you haven't read this book, you probably don't know what Blake's work looks like. Skillfully employing gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, lasers, Fourier transform infra-red spectrometry, and good old-fashioned saliva on a cotton swab, they scrub away dirt, yellowed varnish, and moronic overpaintings, and reveal how Blake wanted you to see. A tiny edge of blue indicates the firmament that Satan originally strode through in the now-yellowed Satan in His Original Glory. The chemical "Maillard reaction" has horribly browned The Ghost of a Flea; a small detail illustration reveals the original brilliant, star-studded blue Blake intended. The detective work is fascinating, and the profuse illustrations both technically and esthetically illuminating. Blake would have sung hosannas over this book: it cleanses the doors of perception. --Tim AppeloBook Description

William Blake: The Painter at Work offers an innovative and revealing approach to one of the most individual of all British artists. Although the highly idiosyncratic nature of Blake's techniques has long been recognized, this is the first book to explore the practical methods behind his unique style--providing a fuller understanding of exactly how this secretive artist worked as a painter.

Richly illustrated with Blake's temperas, watercolors, and color prints and drawings, the book includes essays by leading international authorities who illuminate Blake's techniques and materials using up-to-the-minute research methods. Their analysis of numerous individual works reveals, for example, that Blake used essentially the same range of colors in them all, even if some of the more than 100 temperas he painted from 1799 to 1826 have since darkened or faded.

The book consists of four main sections. Introductory chapters are followed by essays on Blake's watercolors, large color prints, and temperas. An epilogue discusses the presentation of the paintings, and appendices provide more detail on the works discussed. The contributors are John Anderson, Peter Bower, Noa Cahaner McManus, John Dean, Robin Hamlyn, Bronwyn Ormsby, Brian Singer, Joyce H. Townsend, and Piers Townshend.

William Blake: The Painter at Work not only casts new light on the incomparable oeuvre that made Blake one of the most perennially popular of visual artists but also points to ways of preserving this work for future generations. There are still unanswered questions, but now there are answers too.

Customer Reviews (1)

indispensable
An indispenasable book for those interested in the latest research
on William Blake's techniques as an artist. ... Read more