The Book of Urizen

The artistic genius of William Blake (1757–1827) found expression in both graphic works and visionary poetic writings. Among Blake’s most masterful productions are books that combined these forms, which he personally engraved and printed using a technique of his own devising. These works were hand-colored by Blake as individual copies were sold, often years or even decades after their original conception, and consequently each surviving copy reflects a unique aspect of Blake’s creativity.
The Book of Urizen was originally engraved in 1794 as The First Book of Urizen, for a projected series of works expressing Blake’s idiosyncratic cosmogony. Only a handful of copies are known to have been completed, and only one of these was executed later in the artist’s career (ca. 1818). That copy, reproduced with unequaled detail and accuracy in this Octavo Edition, uses masterly techniques of coloring to produce in many instances what are virtually original paintings, highlighted in liquid gold. Blake’s painstaking technique transforms the relatively flat picture surface of the original engravings into a dazzling epic in miniature that combines his bardic verse with otherworldly imagery to recount as never before the origins of human experience.
Commentary by Nicolas Barker, searchable transcription.