The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake

No work has challenged its readers like Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake's Proverbs of Hell--by turns iconoclastic, bizarre, and unprecedented--have been employed as the slogans of student protest and become axioms of modern thought. Most extraordinary, though, is the revolutionary method Blake employed in making the physical book. The Bodleian Library holds one of the first copies that Blake printed using a technique he called illuminated printing, and it is the only work in which he signifies its importance.

This new facsimile edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell includes a plate-by-plate guide to the texts, interlinear figures, and larger designs in a commentary accompanying the transcript of each reproduced plate. Drawings from Blake's manuscript notebook, which were used as a basis for the designs, as well as working proof impressions, are also included, demonstrating the evolution of the work. This edition also reproduces a single plate from each of the other eight surviving copies, revealing how over a period of more than thirty years Blake altered the way he finished each copy. An introduction explores the book's literary and historical background, Blake's printing process, and the book's anonymous initial publication.

This expertly edited work is available for students and scholars in paperback and for collectors in a special hardcover edition. Both versions allow Blake's vision to reassert its breathtaking power.

WILLIAM BLAKE was born in London in 1757. He was educated at home and then worked as an apprentice to the engraver James Basire before joining the Royal Academy in 1779. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, and a year later began his career as a poet when he published Poetical Sketches. This was followed by Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), which he also designed and engraved. His other major literary works include The Book of Thel (1789), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1793), Milton (1804-8), and Jerusalem (1804-20). He produced many paintings and engravings during his lifetime. Blake died in 1827.

ALFRED KAZIN was born in Brooklyn in 1915. His first book of criticism, On Native Grounds (1942), was a groundbreaking study of American literature that changed radically our way of looking at it, and established him overnight as a major figure. In a series of books of his own since then, and in many critically edited texts of classic American literary works, he established himself as our preeminent man of letters. He taught widely at Harvard, Smith, Amherst, Hunter College, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and elsewhere. In 1996 he received from the Truman Capote Literary Trust its first Lifetime Achievement Award in Literary Criticism (in memory of Newton Arvin). He died in 1998.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781513269337
ISBN 10	151326933X
Title	The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Author	William Blake
Series	Mint Editions
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Mint Editions
Year published	2021-02-18
Number of pages	28
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable