WILLIAM BLAKE :
THE COMPLETE ILLUMINATED BOOKS

IN HIS Illuminated' books, as he called them, William Blake combined
text and image in a single page in a way that had not been done since the
Middle Ages. He saw religion and politics, intellect and emotion, mind
and body as both unified and in conflict with each other: his work
is expressive of his personal mythology, and his methods
of conveying it were integral to its meaning

To read books such as Jerusalem, America, and Songs of Innocence and of
Experience in cold letterpress bears no comparison with seeing them as
Blake conceived them, infused with his sublime and exhilarating colours
At times tiny figures and forms dance among the lines of the text, flames
appear to burn up the page, and dense passages of Biblical-sounding
text are brought to a jarring halt by startling images of death,
destruction and liberation.

Original copies of the books exist only in minute numbers. Each is
different. Now the plates from The William Blake Trust's Collected
Edition, reproducing a fine example of each book, are brought
together in a single volume, with transcripts of the texts, and an
introduction by the noted Blake scholar David Bindman.
They can at last become part of the lives of all
lovers of art and poetry.

All Religions are One There is No Natural Religion
Songs of Innocence and of Experience . The Book of Thel
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell The Gates of Paradise
Visions of the Daughters of Albion America a Prophecy
Europe a Prophecy The Song of Los
The First Book of Urizen The Book of Ahania
The Book of Los Milton a Poem
Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion
The Ghost of Abel
On Homers Poetry [and] On Virgil
Laocoön

ON THE COVER
Plate 32 fiom Jerusalem
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.