Descrição
Edição impressa para igualar o papel impresso por Blake na edição original.
“That William Blake was a great artist as well as one of the greatest poets of the English language is well known. What is not so widely known is that he found a means of combining both sides of his genius in what he called “Illuminated Printing”. Blake wrote out his poems with a surrounding design which often assumed the importance of an individual plate, and he etched each page and coloured it by hand as and when he had a purchaser. Thus Blake, the poet of genius, was also a consummate craftsman, a poet who illustrated and printed all his great works, including the visionary prophetic books. In fact, Blake the poet, printer and prophet, was the precursor of both symbolism and surrealism.
The original illuminated books are, of course, collectors’ items and museum pieces. Their intricate colouring presents such a formidable challenge to printers that they have seldom been reproduced. Only ten years ago, the William Blake Trust asked the Trianon Press in Paris to produce faithful facsimiles of the remarkable Blake books; these facsimiles were of outstanding quality, but they too could be printed only in strictly limited editions at very high cost.
The publication of this volume, then, is an artistic and literary event of considerable importance since the Trianon Press has drawn on its experience in the facsimile reproduction of Blake’s books while using the latest advances in mechanical printing techniques to prepare a magnificent anthology of Blake’s work at a price which at last makes it available to the general public. The luxuriously produced volume, printed on paper made especially to match the tint used by Blake, contains 59 six and eight-colour plates — selections from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Europe, America, The Book of Urizen, Milton and Jerusalem.”
