William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience contain some of Blake's finest and best-loved poems, which are presented here in the form which best satisfied the high expectations of his poetic and artistic aspirations. The fifty-four plates which Blake originally etched and coloured by hand are beautifully reproduced, and each has the text of the poem printed on the facing page. Here the reader will find The Lamb, The Little Black Boy, The Chimney Sweeper, Infant Joy, The Sick Rose, The Tyger and Infant Sorrow.

From hasty sketches to remarkably detailed first drafts, these plates show the full range of Blake's troubled genius. Composed in the first flush of creativity, 92 plates showcase the artist's finest pencil drawings, selected from Book of Job, Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, visionary heads, mythological figures, Laocoon, and more.