William Blake: The Urizen Books - The First Book of Urizen, The Book of Alhania, The Book of Los
The Illuminated Books of William Blake, Volume 6
Edited with an introduction and Notes by David Worall
Blake's Illuminated Books Series General Editor: David Bindman
folio. pp. 231. colour & b/w illustrations. hardcover. dw. (fine condition). Princeton: Princeton University Press in conjunction with The William Blake Trust, [1995].
ISBN-10: 0691044163 / ISBN-13: 9780691044163
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The last volume in the series of William Blake's Illuminated Books reveal the writer and artist as a prophet driven by a sense of apocalyptic urgency. Blake conceived and executed The Continental Prophecies and The Urizen Books in the early 1790s, capturing the intellectual and spiritual turmoil of the American and French revolutions. Here, for the first time, the general reader will encounter Blake's most intense vision in reproductions that do justice to the originals, accompanied by texts, comprehensive notes and commentaries, and detailed interpretations of the designs.
The Urizen Books, made up of "Urizen," "The Book of Los," and "Ahania," describes the dissemination of the autocratic mythology of Urizen, Blake's inflexibly rationalist and myopic law-giver. These books stand as the author's sensible and considered response to the events of his time. The illuminated text of "Urizen" and the ten full-page illustrations from copy D in the British Museum, never before reproduced, represent a tour de force in Blake's specialist process of color printing.