Blake was one of the finest craftsmen of his time, an artist for whom art and poetry were inextricably linked. He was an independent and rebellious thinker, who abhorred pretension and falsity in others. His Songs of Innocence are products of this innocent imagination untainted by worldliness, while the Songs of Experience resulted from his feelings of indignation and pity for the sufferings of mankind. The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, containing some of Blake's finest and best-loved poems, are present here in the form which satisfied the high expectations of his poetic and artistic aspirations. The fifty-four plates which Blake originally etched and coloured by hand, are faithfully reproduced with the same delicacy and dimensions as the artist created them.
