Songs of Innocence and of Experience

William Blake

Illustrated by William Blake

08 August 2019
9781529025859
128 pages

Synopsis

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience includes some of the visionary poet’s finest and best-loved poems such as ‘The Lamb’, ‘The Chimney-Sweeper’ and ‘The Tiger’.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has a foreword by Peter Harness.

Blake’s work is instantly recognizable by its flamboyance and inventiveness. This gorgeous edition contains stunning reproductions of the fifty-four plates of the poems and illustrations together, which Blake etched himself and coloured by hand. Each has the poem printed on the facing page. Whilst Songs of Innocence captures the innocence of childhood, Songs of Experience is its contrasting sequel.

My mind and my body reacted to certain lines from the Songs of Innocence and of Experience . . . with the joyful immediacy of a flame leaping to meet a gas jet.
As a poet, Blake's greatest works are the short ones, his Songs of Innocence and Experience.