title: William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books
author:  William Blake 
description: Editions of Blake's poetry which as an artist and printer he frequently engraved and published himself most often fail to reproduce his integral illustrations, or do so in poor enough quality as to negate the effort. This Complete edition from the Blake Trust, published last year in a Thames and Hudson hardback edition that is now out of print, should replace the b&amp;w-only Dover edition (but not David V. Erdman's commentary therein, or his reading text The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake) for any reader. The 366 crisp color and 30 b&amp;w reproductions here, culled from the scholarly Princeton University Press six-volume annotated set, are little short of a revelation, giving us Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, America, Milton, Jerusalem and the rest of the Blake canon in a form acceptably close, as Binder's introduction makes clear, to the way Blake wanted us to see them. Many of these works are currently hanging in a special Blake exhibition the largest ever at the Met in New York, for which the Abrams book serves as an informative and revealing catalogue. Hamlyn, a senior curator at London's Tate (where the exhibition originated), and the University of York's Phillips present prints, drawings, paintings, selections from Blake's own illuminated books and other relevant materials, such as snapshots from Blake's marvelous editions of Edward Young's Night Thoughts and Thomas Gray's Poems. Introductory essays from novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd (Blake; T.S. Eliot) and Marilyn Butler, rector of Oxford's Exeter College, synopsize Blake's life and times, while extensive "label copy" situates each work as presented. While the visual overview is useful and some of the detail shots of larger works are compelling, poetry readers who have to choose will take the Complete.
zlib_text: William Blake and
  the Age of Revolution
  J. Bronowski
  
  WILLIAM BLAKE AND 
  THE AGE OF REVOLUTION 
  This book has for long been regarded as 
  the outstanding account of Blake and his 
  works. At the same time it can properly 
  be regarded as the best introduction to 
  Blake. First published in 1944 as William 
  Blake, it has been out of print in this 
  country for some years, and is now pub¬ 
  lished in a considerably revised and cor¬ 
  rected edition. Dr Bronowski offers an 
  important interpretation of Blake’s art 
  and poetry in the context of the Revolu¬ 
  tionary period during which Blake was 
  working. He brings to the study of Blake 
  the powers of a mathematician-scientist 
  as well as those of a perceptive and sensi¬ 
  tive critic. 
  £2.25 net 
  
  WILLIAM BLAKE 
  AND THE AGE 
  OF REVOLUTION 
  
  Digitized by the Internet Archive 
  in 2019 with funding from 
  Kahle/Austin Foundation 
  https://archive.org/details/williamblakeageoOOOObron 
  
  WILLIAM BLAKE 
  AND THE AGE 
  OF REVOLUTION 
  J. Bronowksi 
  Routledge & 