Published to mark the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth, Selected Poems is a celebration of the poet’s key shorter works selected and introduced by Seamus Heaney, with exquisite wood engravings by Peter Reddick.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Illustrated by the author
Introduced by Patti Smith
With every poem perfectly reproduced from the finest surviving copy of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, this Folio collector’s edition is introduced by Patti Smith.
US$230.00
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‘I was fascinated by the possibility that one creates both word and image as did Blake, with copperplate, linen and rag, walnut oils, a simple pencil.’
- Patti Smith, from her introduction
Artist, mystic, poet and craftsman, William Blake had a unique view of the world around him. At the age of eight he saw ‘a tree filled with angels’ and his perception of beauty in an idyllic utopia shines from every luminous detail of his paintings and every line of his poems. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is arguably his defining work. Filled with Blake’s illustrated poems that explore adult themes such as death and social justice, this is a collection of great visual and literary power.
This exquisite edition is reproduced from the finest surviving copy, known as ‘Copy W’, which was printed and hand-coloured by Blake, with the largely unacknowledged help of his wife Catherine and is now held at King’s College, Cambridge. Patti Smith has written a profoundly beautiful introduction to the edition, in which she describes Blake as: ‘A rough-hewn seer who never tasted but English air, who loved Michaelangelo yet never saw Rome’; her words further elevating this unique collector’s edition of a remarkable piece of literary history.
Bound in Brillianta cloth, blocked in gold foil
Set in Caslon
160 pages
Materica endpapers
Ribbon marker
Gilded on all 3 page edges
Presented in a cloth-covered clamshell box with inset label, lined with paper printed with a detail from 'The Blossom'
Book 11⅕˝ x 8⅘˝ Box 12⅕˝ x 9½˝
Credit: King’s College, Cambridge
‘Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody poor;
And mercy no more could be, If all we as happy as we;’
The poems originally appeared in phases, with Blake first publishing a few copies of Songs of Innocence in 1789, and then combining the sets of poems for a complete volume in 1794. Blake produced and illustrated the original copies himself, selling them privately to collectors and friends. The poems are a strange and wonderful exploration of: ‘the two contrary states of the human soul’. They follow simple rhythms and rhyming patterns, echoing the forms of 18th-century children’s ballads, but their meanings are complex and often ambiguous. Blake railed against the political, social and religious institutions of his time. Here he addresses troubling subjects such as poverty, child labour and the repressive influence of the Church, often through subtle satire.
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