Blake Books Supplement

Blake Books Supplement is a continuation of Blake Books (1977), a bibliographical record of publications covering all aspects of William Blake's life and work - his writings, drawings, and engravings - and works of criticism on them. Most of the information in the Supplement was published inthe period 1972-1992, but there are items newly recorded here which appeared as early as the 1790s. The mass of new material is enormous - the last 20 years have produced almost as many items for inclusion as the preceding 200 years covered in the original Blake Books. Some of the most important discoveries concern newly identified writings and engravings by Blake himself. The work is organizedlike Blake Books, enabling the two volumes to be used side by side.

First published in 1982 this book provides a bibliography of commentary, criticism, and scholarship on the works of William Blake. It covers the period from Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry in 1947 to 1980. The criticism is organised according to eleven classifications in order to help direct the research of students and scholars and each chapter is preceded by an introductory essay in order to guide the reader.

"William Blake is a universal artist--an inspiration to visual artists, musicians, poets, and performers worldwide as well as everyone who aspires to the ideals of personal, spiritual, and creative liberty. His heroic story has inspired an invigorated generations. His personal struggles during a period of political terror and oppression, his technical innovations, and his political commitment all remain deeply relevant today. This book presents a comprehensive overview of Blake's work as a printmaker, poet, and painter, foregrounding his relationship with the art world of his time and telling the stories behind many of his most iconic images."--

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.

Writer and religious rebel, William Blake ((1757-1827) sowed the seeds for Romanticism in his innovative poems concerning faith and the visions that inspired him throughout his life. Whether describing his own spirituality, the innocence of youth or the corruption caused by mankind, his writings depict a world in which spirits dominate and the mind is the gateway to Heaven. This collection of his greatest works spans his entire poetic life from the early, exquisite lyrics of Poetic Sketches to his Songs of Innocence and Experience - a compelling exploration of good and evil. Together, they illuminate a self-made realm that has fascinated artists and poets as diverse as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Yeats and Ginsberg.

Poet, painter, and engraver William Blake died in 1827 in obscure poverty with few admirers. The attention paid today to his remarkable poems, prints, and paintings would have astonished his contemporaries. Admired for his defiant, uncompromising creativity, he has become one of the most anthologized and studied writers in English and one of the most studied and collected British artists. His urge to cast words and images into masterpieces of revelation has left us with complex, forceful, extravagant, some times bizarre works of written and visual art that rank among the greatest challenges to plain understanding ever created. This Companion aims to provide guidance to Blake's work in fresh and readable introductions: biographical, literary, art historical, political, religious, and bibliographical. Together with a chronology, guides to further reading, and glossary of terms, they identify the key points of departure into Blake's multifarious world and work.

Sung closely examines William Blake’s extant engraved copper plates and arrives at a new interpretation of his working process. Sung suggests that Blake revised and corrected his work more than was previously thought. This belies the Romantic ideal that the acts of conception and execution are simultaneous in the creative process.