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| Blake's Poetry and Designs (Norton Critical Editions) | 
 enlarge | Author: William Blake
Creators: Mary Lynn Johnson, John E. Grant
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $18.12
Buy New: $16.30
You Save: $1.82 (10%)
New (28) Used (10) from $12.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 528463
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 628
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.7 x 1
ISBN: 039392498X
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.7
EAN: 9780393924985
ASIN: 039392498X
Publication Date: November 19, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
This generous selection from Blake's poems, prose, notebooks, marginalia, and letters is accompanied by many of the poet's illuminations for his own works, some in full color. The editors have modified Blake's original spelling and punctuation for greater accessibility.
Almost all of Blake's published writings are here, as well as most of the best shorter poems that remained in manuscript at his death, and much of his most energetic prose. Of Blake's Major epics, Milton is printed in full, in its longest version; Jerusalem is represented by selections amounting to one-third of the complete poem; and The Four Zoas by briefer excerpts. All the other poetic works are presented complete.
"Criticism" includes contemporary responses by Coleridge, Lamb, John Thomas Smith, Frederick Tatham, Henry Crabb Robinson, and Samuel Palmer. Modern critical essays are by T. S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, Jean Hagstrum, Robert F. Gleckner, Irene Tayler, Martin K. Nurmi, Martin Price, David V. Erdman, Harold Bloom, and E. J. Rose.
Maps, a Chronology of Blake's life and times, and a Bibliography of Blake studies are also included.
About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
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| Customer Reviews:
Very solid edition of Blake's works October 13, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
William Blake is one of those soaring pioneers of the human imagination whose visions and their scope make you feel rather humble at times. His works are quite diverse and his output during his life very considerable. Blake's longer poems, such as 'Jerusalem' or the 'Four Zoas', would easily make large books of their own in any edition of his works.
This Norton's edition contains selections from several of Blake's major works, including his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, his visionary poems, as well as his political poems. The book also contains many scholarly aids including a chronology of Blake's life, critical essays by leading Blake scholars, and colour pages showing Blake's beautiful illustrations to some of his works (as well as being a great poet Blake was also a painter and engraver of very considerable ability). While critics never seem to really reach any consensus on what Blake's poems really 'mean' (Blake is read variously as a Gnostic by Harold Bloom, a revolutionary critic of England during the industrial revolution by Terry Eagleton, or as a disciple of Swedenborg and Boehme by others) Blake's poems contain incredible beauty and visionary power and polyvalent symbols energised with multiple meanings. I think if one consistent theme can be read from Blake and his poems, and I think this was his own intent, was that the power of the human imagination and what it produces in art transcends any attempt to 'bracket' or reduce it to a dead and static system of lifeless scientific symbols; I imagine Blake would class many critics of his work as agents of Urizen, trying to carve out of the fiery energized cosmos of the living human mind the perfect frozen archetype which orders all things perfectly but in doing so, misses the whole point.
Blake's poems then should be read not by trying to impose what you want to see in them but by trying to let them speak to you and perhaps, ignite your own spark of imagination, as Blake has done with many brilliant poets from Yeats to Allan Ginsberg and many others.
 Very good text for introducing Blake to students September 11, 2002
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a book is quite good as most Norton Critical Editions are. It has a lot of what is needed by students for a course on Blake or, more likely, a course that spends part of a term on Blake.It has some biographical material and some maps of England and London at the time Blake lived. There are also a good helping of black and white as well as color plates of Blake's illuminated works. The color plates are only good - the color is not produced beautifully. The student will only get an impression of the true power of Blake's artistry. However, a good teacher will point the student to the Blake Archive at:... so the students can see the works more completely with variants and in better color (if you have good video cards and monitors). One of the best parts of this book begins on page 176 where working drafts are shown and compared to the final versions. There is also a nice selection of critical writing on Blake - criticism from Blake's time through the present. There is also a useful bibliography. In some ways this is "Erdman Lite", but it is much more portable than Erdman and for an introductory course on Blake it is probably sufficient. I am glad that I have it in my library. But please don't stop here!
Blake's Poetry and Designs April 20, 2000
3 out of 17 found this review helpful
Nice book, but too bad its front picture cover is defaced by Norton's double-layer of big gold stickers with high-tack adhesive that makes them impossible to remove without adhesive remaining on the cover.
Come and see a world in a grain of sand . . . July 11, 1996
51 out of 51 found this review helpful
This is absolutely the best compendium of Blake's work whicharticualtes an outstanding range of his vision. Thisedition acknowledges the poetry and color paintings of a consumate craftsman of the imagination on high quality, acid free paper and is nylon stitched and bound in signatures to last a lifetime. Books are rarely made this way but the Norton edition is a beautiful rendering of the first, and perhaps, primary British Romantic poet.
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