Best Selling Books by William Blake

Poetry.

William Blake is one of England''s most original artists whose works aim to liberate imaginative energies. This volume contains his greatest writings and a generous selection from the Prophetic Books including Milton and Jerusalem.

This edition includes almost all Blake''s substantive variants with the exception of some in the exceptionally complex manuscript of Vala, or the Four Zoas.

In this book, a collection of poems William Blake, (November 28, 1757 - August 12, 1827) - English poet and artist.William Blake was a 19th century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages, and he has been deemed both a major poet and an original thinker.

In 1809 the little-known artist William Blake held an exhibition of 16 paintings in a private house in Soho in the west end of London. Works inspired by Chaucer''s "Canterbury Tales" and John Milton''s "Paradise Lost" sat alongside biblical scenes and Arthurian legend. The exhibition was not a success; the only review in the press was extremely unfavourable and few of the public came. One of those who did was the poet Charles Lamb, who later described the pictures as ''hard, dry, yet with grace'', and the catalogue that accompanied the show as ''mystical and full of vision''. It is this catalogue that Tate Publishing are once again making available. In it, the scale and range of Blake''s ambition are made plain, along with his theories on painting, his unsparing critiques of other artists and some extraordinary insights into the working of his mind. The only detailed writing on art that remains to us by Blake, it throws light on all his subsequent artistic enterprises, including the illuminated books for which he is perhaps most famous. Part commentary and part manifesto, his catalogue is as radical as it is in places eccentric (he claims at one point to have been transported in a "vision" back to the classical world). Fully illustrated in colour with reproductions of surviving works originally in the exhibition, the book includes an illuminating essay by leading authority on British art Martin Myrone, Lead Curator of Pre-1800 Art at Tate Britain, making it an essential purchase for all of those wanting to know more.

Gift set includes Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

''Every page is a window open in Heaven ... interwoven designs companion the poems, and gold and yellow tints diffuse themselves over the page like summer clouds. The poems [of Song of Innocence] are the morning song of Blake''s genius.'' - W.B. Yeats''Blake sang of the ideal world, of the truth of the intellect, and of the divinity of imagination ... The only writer to have written songs for children with the soul of a child ... he holds, in my view, a unique position because he unites intellectual sharpness with mystic sentiment.'' - James JoyceSong of Innocence and of Experience is a rare and wonderful book, its seeming simplicity belying its visionary wisdom. Internationally recognised as a masterpiece of English literature, it also occupies a key position in the history of western art.This unique edition of the work allows Blake to communicate with his readers as he intended, reproducing Blake''s own illumination and lettering from the finest existing example of the original work. In this way readers can experience the mystery and beauty of Blake''s poems as he first created them, discovering for themselves the intricate webs of symbol and meaning that connects word and image.Each poem is accompanied by a literal transcription, and the volume is introduced by the renowned historian and critic, Richard Holmes. The poems are narrated by novelist and critic, Adam Mars-Jones.This beautiful edition of Song of Innocence and of Experience will be essential for those familiar with Blake''s work, but also offers an ideal way into his visionary world for those encountering Blake for the first time.

Written in the form of biblical prophecy, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell presents philosophical ideas about God, humanity and the complex nature of ethics. It’s a bold yet humorous examination of binary belief systems and their conflicting principles. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a remarkable narrative that explores common religious themes such as good versus evil. The author uses vibrant storytelling to expand on the importance of these contradictory terms. He details how competing ideals are integral to the human experience. Without them, a person may remain stagnant and never reach their full potential. Progress cannot occur without the tension stemming from love and hate, reason and energy, or attraction and repulsion. William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell uses stunning visuals and metaphors to discuss the nuances of man. His unique perspective highlights fundamental differences that embody the human condition. Within the text, Blake investigates the greatness the is often found in struggle. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is both modern and readable.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul."Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton''s existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and "Fall". Blake''s categorizes our modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a state of protected innocence rather than original sin, but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience", a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes.