Blake's Poetry and Designs: A Norton Critical Edition

The Second Edition of this revered Norton Critical Edition is the most comprehensive introduction to Blake s 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 Blake s verse. Biographical context is provided through dozens of excerpts from Blake s notebook, letters, marginalia, and other writings. Criticism offers twenty wide-ranging commentaries by writers from Blake s 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 Blake s life and work, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.