William Blake: Marriage of Heaven & Hell

William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is here stunningly reproduced in a beautiful hardback edition, with a new, illuminating introduction.

Blake’s writing and art immediately draws the reader into a fantastical and surrealist landscape, where the protagonist converses with angels who have thrown their lot in with revolutionary hell, or chats with prophets and devils about the nature of God, the universe and everything.

Among the beautiful and striking illuminated books etched and printed by William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell stands out as one of his most inspired and influential books. Written in 1790 at the beginning of the French Revolution, it represents Blake’s first attempt to create a new system of art, poetry and philosophy, declaring himself on the side of the devils in a world that was being turned upside down.

While perhaps lesser known than his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, it has strong echoes throughout pop culture, and is arguably more influential on later generations of writers, thinkers and even musicians, from Aldous Huxley drawing on it as a key text to opening the doors of perception, which in turn gave The Doors their name, through to figures as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Benjamin Britten, Olga Tokarczuk and Keith Haring.

With contributions from Sibylle Erle, Juliet Rylance, Mark Rylance, Tamsin Rosewell, and Jason Whittaker.

William Blake (1757–1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. Apprentice to a master engraver, Blake studied at the Royal Academy under the guidance of Joshua Reynolds, before later engraving and publishing Songs of Innocence in 1789 and the contrasting Songs of Experience in 1794.

• Dimensions 15.5 x 10.5 cm
• Material FSC certified paper with cloth back