Blake's Poetry and Designs (Norton Critical Editions)

The Second Edition of this revered Norton Critical Edition is the most comprehensive introduction to Blakes poetry and thought available.

In addition to a broad selection of the poems, the volume includes over 100 images (16 in color), emphasizing the centrality of pictorial representations to Blakes verse. Biographical context is provided through dozens of excerpts from Blakes notebook, letters, marginalia, and other writings. Criticism offers twenty wide-ranging commentaries by writers from Blakes contemporaries to present-day critics, among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Northrop Frye, Allen Ginsberg, Morris Eaves, Harold Bloom, Alicia Ostriker, John Mee, Saree Makdisi, and Julia Wright. A section on Textual Technicalities, a Chronology of Blakes life and work, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.