William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books Author: William Blake | Language: English | ISBN:
B006P7S2LQ | Format: PDF
William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books Description
- Contains over 400 original photographic reproductions of Blake’s hand-crafted masterpieces
William Blake was one of the England’s greatest poets, and one of England’s greatest artists. He united art and poetry in his “illuminated books”, which he painstakingly engraved with his verses and drawings, then coloured by hand. Only a few copies of each one were ever made. The illuminated books are a sublime expression of his unique religious and artistic vision, exploring good and evil, heaven and hell, and the nature of human imagination. Even after two centuries their timeless beauty can takes a viewer’s breath away. This monumental ebook edition brings together for the first time all of these immortal masterpieces, including Songs of Innocence and Experience, Milton, Jerusalem, and his “prophecies” America and Europe. This edition presents reproductions of every page of the illuminated books, with each one followed by the text of the poem, meticulously edited and fully searchable. All of the illustrations have been specially formatted for Kindle. They render in elegant black and white on e-paper Kindles, and in glorious full colour on tablets such as the iPad or Kindle Fire, or on Kindle for PC. Blake’s visionary works can finally be experienced as he himself intended, with words and art together in one.
“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”
William Blake
- File Size: 45295 KB
- Print Length: 480 pages
- Publisher: Lexicos Publishing (December 20, 2011)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B006P7S2LQ
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,313 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Photography > Art > Religious - #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > British > Poetry - #47
in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > Themes > Religious
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Photography > Art > Religious - #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > British > Poetry - #47
in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > Themes > Religious
Valuable things are not easy; easy things are not valuable. I don't know if that's a quotation from the Tao-Te Ching, but it ought to be. William Blake's longer poems, the so-called Prophetic Books, are legendary in their difficulty. Each of the two great epics, "Milton" and "Jerusalem", is a world in itself, taking years or decades to explore. Everyone who has made the effort considers it time well spent.
Blake wasn't shy about the importance of his own work. In a letter he described "Milton" as "the Grandest Poem this World Contains". But these immense, unique hand-engraved, hand-coloured cosmic-spiritual epics found no buyers in Blake's own lifetime. Only one coloured copy of "Jerusalem" is known to exist.
The Illuminated Books have been reproduced in colour before, but this is the first time all the plates have been printed full-size in a single book. Blake is fascinating even in black-and-white, but to read these books in the form intended means entering a new world. By depicting spiritual principles as People, Blake shows us the meaning of all ancient gods.
After the lyrics of the "Songs of Innocence and "Songs of Experience", the best place to start is the "Book of Thel", then the "Visions of the Daughters of Albion". When reading the long books, a plain text copy of the "Complete Poems" will come in handy: difficulty in reading Blake's graceful orange script for "Jerusalem" may be one difficulty too many. The remaining shorter books, with their anguished mythical narratives, rely more than the others on their illustrations, printed as if with fire, rust and soot: images of an age of Revolution.
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