Songs of innocence and of experience. Shewing the two contrary states of the human soul, 1789-1794 - Hardcover

Orion Press Hardcover, First published in 1967, copyright 1967, with 54 Plates. - Wm. Blake was a great artist as well as one of the greatest poets in the English language. Blake wrote out his poems with the surrounding designs, etched each page and coloured it by hand as and when he had a purchaser. Today, these books are museum pieces, and even facsimile reproductions can be obtained only at high prices. Now, however, modern techical advances have made it possible to provide reproductions, at a reasonable price. In this volume are Blake's most loved poems. Since Blake's handwriten text is not always easy to read, the poems are also printed in letterpress on the page opposite. The 54 plates are reproduced in six and eight-colour offset, under the direction of the Trianon Press in Paris, who have for the past 15 years been producing limited, hand-coloured editions of Blake's illuminated books for The William Blake Trust. Critics have praised this superb facsimile of Blake's greatest poems. They are reproduced in the exact size of the original.