The Prophetic Books Of William Blake

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35 plates in full color. Facsimile edition based on rare, priceless originals engraved and hand-colored by Blake himself.

The writings of William Blake were not understood by his contemporaries or the Victorians, and it was only in 1910, with the publication of Joseph Wicksteed's Blake's Vision of the Book of Job, that the long process of comprehending Blake's works seriously began. Part 1 of the present work consists of twelve chapters that are primarily intended to lead the reader who has little or no acquaintance with Blake's more difficult works through all his books. These consist of Poetical Sketches, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, three early prose tractates, the eleven shorter prophetic books (including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell), the lyrics of the Pickering Manuscript, The Four Zoas, Milton, Jerusalem, The Gates of Paradise, The Ghost of Abel and Illustrations of The Book of Job. The reader who wishes to explore a work more fully can proceed to Part II, where a headnote outlines the main scholarly views of its structure and meaning. There are two indexes providing ready access to explanations of terms and proper names.

The last volumes in the series of William Blake's Illuminated Books reveal the writer and artist as a prophet driven by a sense of apocalyptic urgency. Blake conceived and executed The Continental Prophecies and The Urizen Books in the early 1790s, capturing the intellectual and spiritual turmoil of the American and French revolutions. Here, for the first time, the general reader will encounter Blake's most intense vision in reproductions that do justice to the originals, accompanied by texts, comprehensive notes and commentaries, and detailed interpretations of the designs. The Continental Prophecies, which comprises "America," "Europe," and "The Song of Los," presents Blake's critical reckoning with the history of his own times. Marked by a particularly close integration of word and image, the books form a mythical plot from historical events and criticize the intricate structure of social oppression that the author attributes to organized state religion. Each of the three books attempts to point a way toward the process of millennial liberation. These volumes complete the six-part series of William Blake's Illuminated Books, including Jerusalem, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (now available in paperback), The Early Illuminated Books, and Milton, A Poem, all published by Princeton University Press.

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