William Blake: Complete Illuminated Books: The Complete Illuminated Books 1st Edition

The best William Blake book for any fan of his illustrations. High quality printing!

I would have had no room to shelve the original glorious oversized book anymore, but this is a wonderful alternative. You can see the beautiful madness of his art, poetry and paintings. Absolutely fantastic, for $1.99!

This beautiful paperback volume consists of high quality reproductions of Blake's original illustrated books. It is an incredible bargain. The pictures are powerful and Blake intended the pictures and the texts to illumine each other. I've never disciplined myself to sit down and read the text from the engraved script; its not easy or natural since the print on many plates is small and faint; but it would be worth the effort. However, there is a type face version of all the poems in the back, to refer to when needed to make out a word. This is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand Blake's profound prophetic vision more deeply.

Excellent illustrations, not as large as those in museum exhibits, but just as powerful, and they are all here.

This book is a complete collection of Blake's "Illuminated" works. If you are interested at all in Blake, or even think you might be at some point, you will want to buy this book eventually -- and now is as good a time as any. It is convenient, relatively inexpensive (as of this writing), and with only a very few unfortunate exceptions (a few pages out of 400) provides a remarkable experience to the reader.The book contains high-resolution scans of Blake's pages. These scans are at their original scale, and by modern standards are quite small, hence most of the complaints about needing magnifying glasses. Several copies exist of each of Blake's originals, and only one such copy is reproduced here for each of the works. The originals are among the most valuable literary artifacts in existence and it was not a trivial matter for the book's editors to scan them. However the legibility of some of the original pages selected is simply poor, aside from their size. I am still young and sharp eyed and had no trouble reading those plates with clear printing even when the text was tiny; but there are places where the printed impression of the text is simply too faded to be read. For instance, Urizen 21. There is a complete typeset text in the back of the book, but it must be said that reading Blake's writings in their original Illuminated context is a very much superior experience, and every time the reader must flip to the back it is an unpleasant interruption. No doubt the editors had their reasons for selecting the originals as they did, but I very much wish they had put more emphasis on legibility in their choice, especially given their perfectly defensible insistence on preserving the scale of the originals.The choice to scan an uncolored print of America: A Prophecy is likewise questionable, but is at least noted and defended. This collection has a clear policy of minimal commentary, but in cases where there is significant variation in text between printings -- for instance the obvious defacing of a suggestive couplet on Thel 6 -- there ought to have been *some* note on at least the existence of such variations, even if explanation and commentary is outside the editorial bounds.These are minor criticisms: right now this is the definitive edition of Blake's Illuminated Books for a regular audience. If you are even slightly farsighted -- have ever even considered reading glasses -- you will probably need them if not a magnifying glass for this. Have them handy and you will spare yourself some frustration. But the experience is worth it, and you will be no worse off than Blake's original audience.

Peter Ackroyd's biography, Blake, renewed my interest in Blake's graphic work. This collection of Blake's plates turns out to be wonderfully exciting, complete and visually arresting. I am extremely excited by it. The opportunity to read his work as written, painted or etched in his own hand is wonderful. Moreover, I find that the same texts that soon proved "dry" when viewed as text alone now come alive when accompanied by the Master's graphic designs.Frankly, I can't wait to share copies with friends. I have already shared it with those couple of friends with an interest in art and poetry.

Generally, I enjoy the art works printed by Dover Publishers. For Dore, Grosz, Hogarth, Piranesi there is none out there better.But volume of Blake's work is worth a price that is triples the rate for anything from Dover.It is a beautiful publication with perfect color matches to the original. It offers the chance for the reader to deal with the text from the original or to choose much more readable type at the volume's end.If you want to have a visionary's art and verse handy and home, this is the book to buy

Hmm, the concept is great, but many of the plates are too small to even see major details. Really disappointing. Better off looking at these online sadly.Edit: Some of it is quite nice though.