Songs of Experience : Facsimile Reproduction with 26 Plates in Full Color

Rating:
Summary: Thank God for Dover editions!
Review: Finally, a crisp, clean reproduction of Songs of Innocense and Songs of Experience for all the Blake fans with high school incomes! These books are small--the size of the originals, easy to manage (although a magnifying glass may come in handy for some of the finer figures like the man in the "I" of Innocense!). They consist of reproductions of the original plates and normal typeset lyrics for each poem in the back.

While the facsimiles for Innocense are taken from an earlier copy and are fairly pale, with limited coloring, those for Experience are bold and vivid. It's nice to have both books simply to compare, in the poems that Blake moved to Experience, how his style evolved. This reproduction of "A Poison Tree" is my favorite of any I've seen.

At this price, these two books are a Blakey's dream come true.