In his ‘illuminated’ books, William Blake combined his handwritten text with his exuberant imagery on pages the like of which had not been seen since the great decorated books of the Middle Ages. To have Blake’s great prophetic poems - Jerusalem and Songs of Innocence and of Experience, for example - in cold letterpress bears no comparison to seeing and reading them in Blake’s own medium, with his sublime and exhilarating colours.This edition, produced together with The William Blake Trust, contains all the pages of Blake’s twenty or so illuminated books reproduced in true size, an appendix with all Blake’s text set in type and an introduction by the noted Blake scholar, David Bindman.
