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THE EDITORSMARY LYNN JOHNSON,
Adjunct Professor of English and Assistant to the
President at the University of Iowa, received her
Ph.D. from Tulane University. She has taught at
the University of Illinois and has been a
visiting professor at Cornell College. She is
co-author of Blake's "Four Zoas":
The Design of a Dream. |
William Blake
BLAKE'S POETRY AND DESIGNS
edited by Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant, both of University of Iowa
This generous selection from Blake’s poems, prose, notebooks, marginalia, and letters is accompanied by many of the poet’s illuminations for his own works, some in full color. The editors have modified Blake’s original spelling and punctuation for greater accessibility.
Almost all of Blake’s published writings are here, as well as most of the best shorter poems that remained in manuscript at his death, and much of his most energetic prose. Of Blake's Major epics, Milton is printed in full, in its longest version; Jerusalem is represented by selections amounting to one-third of the complete poem; and The Four Zoas by briefer excerpts. All the other poetic works are presented complete.
"Criticism" includes contemporary responses by Coleridge, Lamb, John Thomas Smith, Frederick Tatham, Henry Crabb Robinson, and Samuel Palmer. Modern critical essays are by T. S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, Jean Hagstrum, Robert F. Gleckner, Irene Tayler, Martin K. Nurmi, Martin Price, David V. Erdman, Harold Bloom, and E. J. Rose.
Maps, a Chronology of Blake's life and times, and a Bibliography of Blake studies are also included.
