"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour"

William Blake wrote some of the most moving and memorable verse in the English language. Deeply committed to visionary and imaginative experience, yet also fiercely engaged with the turbulent politics of his era, he is now recognised as a major contributor to the Romantic Movement.

This edition presents Blake's poems in their literary categories and genres to which they belong: his much-loved lyrics, ballads, comic and satirical verse, descriptive and discursive poems, verse epistles, and, finally, his remarkable 'prophetic' poems, including the whole of his two diffuse epics, Milton and Jerusalem.

Blake's poetry is intellectually challenging as well as formally inventive, and this edition has a substantial critical introduction which places his ideas in the contemporary context of the Enlightenment and the artistic reaction against its key assumptions.

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Features

• A new selection of the poetry of William Blake -- largely ignored in his lifetime, but now recognised as a unique and haunting lyricist, and one of the key voices of the Romantic Age.
• Arranges Blake's poems by genre, looking at his lyrics, short epics, sublime epics, and satirical and discursive works in turn.
• Nicholas Shrimpton's introduction and explanatory notes consider modern Blake scholarship, his position as one of the defining English poets, his juvenilia, and the distinct genres of his work.
• Includes an up-to-date bibliography, a chronology, and a substantial note on the text.

ABOUT THE SERIES

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Abbreviations
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of William Blake
LYRICS FROM POETICAL SKETCHES
MANUSCRIPT POEMS FROM FLAXMAN'S COPY OF POETICAL SKETCHES
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE SHEWING THE TWO CONTRARY STATES OF THE HUMAN SOUL
POEMS ADDED TO LATER COPIES OF SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE
LYRICS FROM THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL
LYRICS FROM THE NOTEBOOK
BALLADS
NARRATIVE POEMS
DESCRIPTIVE AND DISCURSIVE POETRY
COMIC AND SATIRICAL POETRY
VERSE EPISTLES and DEDICATIONS
BRIEF EPIC
DIFFUSE EPIC
Explanatory Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines

William Blake

Edited by Nicholas Shrimpton.

Nicholas Shrimpton is the editor of Trollope's The Prime Minister (2011), The Warden (2014), and An Autobiography (2016), for Oxford World's Classics. His most recent title for Oxford World's Classics is Disraeli's Sybil (2017).

"New and innovative ... a brilliant chronological timeline ... by combining historical research with literary scholarship, Shrimpton creates a version of Blake's poems which is significantly different to all others ... a fresh view which allows readers to see the development of Blake's thoughts and poems." -- Journal of the Blake Society