This book brings the words and images of Blake to brilliant life. The volume is gorgeous, and the colors extremely rich. Having read Blake's poetry in un-illuminated format before, I now am even more appreciative of the value of seeing the work as Blake originally intended. Blake is a marvelous poet and artist, and this collection of his illuminated work is a marvelous book.

This is the best book on Blake that I have read bar none. For an all around introduction to the prophetic language of this Romantic poet, there is no better source. More readable than Frye. More profound than Hilton. Makes a great Christmas gift for any Blake fans on your list.

I won't bother to review Dante's "Divine Comedy". The fact that it has withstood the test of time, and its depicitions of heaven and hell have become ingrained into our mythology, reveal far more than anything I could say.

This translation, however, was simply too difficult to read. It was too full of "thees" and "thous", and quite frankly did not flow at all. Reading it was a real struggle for me. The annotation and Canto introductions, however, were very helpful, and gave me a better picture of what Dante was saying than the actual text itself. The book also has the advantage of being compact (all three parts in one average-sized book), and reasonably priced.

However, I would recommend searching for a translation written in a more modern style, so that Dante's message isn't obscured in a linguistic haze. What he said was too important to be lost in a struggle with the langauge.

The all-encompassing mind of Dante has produced indeed one of the main sources of Western culture. It is a rich poem, full of interesting stories and commentary and which, like all true classics, can be read from different standpoints and has different dimensions. It tells Dante's travel to Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Daniel Boorstin has called it "Adventures in Death". It is also one of the main bridges between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Like other works from this period, it mixes classical mythology and tradition with Christian history. The first evidence of this is the fact that although Dante travels to the Christian underworld, his guide is the Roman poet Virgil, no less.

Dante's work is thus multi-layered: it is an exploration of virtue and sin and their consequences; a profound criticism of the state of the Catholic Church at the time, attacking fiercely the institution of the Papacy and Boniface VIII in particular, for their corruption; a reelaboration of old Medieval themes; a bitter analysis of Italian and especially Florentine politics of his day, whose effects he so cruelly suffered.

During his trip, Dante meets and speaks with Biblical characters, Greco-Roman ones, and contemporaries of him. These people tell their stories and explain why they are where they are. Dante touches practically on all relevant and controversial subjects of his time, as well as many of our own. Although in any translation we miss the lyricism of his verse, we can still appreciate the quality and dignity of his writing.

It is not, of course, an easy reading. It is not "light" literature and it demands intelligent, cultivated and also demanding readers. But the reward is infinite. Dante's work has had any number of repercussions in subsequent culture. I think, for example, of Tchaikovsky's "Francesca di Rimini", based on one of the fascinating stories told to Dante in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Dante's images are powerful, terrorific in Hell and purely Divine in Heaven. His imagination is truly remarkable, in the way he describes the punsihments and rewards, as well as the characters and their situations.

Lose the fear and plunge into this greatest tour de force. It is really Dantesque.

I am not a literary expert, nor am I well read in all of the great literature of the past, but I have read enough to say this is the best piece of literature I've read.

First, the Divine Comedy Itself. I first read the Inferno as an Undergrad in general ed. I just loved this story as challenging as it was to read. Curiosity got to me, and I bought this edition (the same as I had read for the Inferno). The book got much more challenging to read as it progresses, perhaps because the imagery is much more abstract, but it also gets more fantastic all the way through. The Paradiso definitely fits its purpose as a climax. The whole of The Divine Comedy is a good story of the spiritual journey of one man through "the afterlife" so to speak. I love the interaction the book takes of Dante's interaction with history and religion, biblical and mythical. It is an interesting perspective that shows the genious of Dante the author.

As for this particular edition. I could not tell you it is the best as I have never read others. I've heard this is one of the few that has tried to make the translation stay true to the original Latin poetic form Dante used. I also think it is wonderful, and from my point essential, that this edition comes with extensive notes that help explain in layman's terms what is going on in the story Canto by Canto as well as line by line explanations of the different references made to historical people, places, and events as well as literary references.

In sum, all I can say is that "The Divine Comedy" is worth a read especially if you are up to the challenge. I am not a literary expert; I work in engineering, but I find this the most fascinating literature I've ever read. Most of all, it is inpirational, the quest of one man to find his true love, facing Hell and more...

This is a book is quite good as most Norton Critical Editions are. It has a lot of what is needed by students for a course on Blake or, more likely, a course that spends part of a term on Blake.

It has some biographical material and some maps of England and London at the time Blake lived. There are also a good helping of black and white as well as color plates of Blake's illuminated works. The color plates are only good - the color is not produced beautifully. The student will only get an impression of the true power of Blake's artistry. However, a good teacher will point the student to the Blake Archive at:... so the students can see the works more completely with variants and in better color (if you have good video cards and monitors).

One of the best parts of this book begins on page 176 where working drafts are shown and compared to the final versions. There is also a nice selection of critical writing on Blake - criticism from Blake's time through the present. There is also a useful bibliography.

In some ways this is "Erdman Lite", but it is much more portable than Erdman and for an introductory course on Blake it is probably sufficient. I am glad that I have it in my library.

But please don't stop here!

Nice book, but too bad its front picture cover is defaced by Norton's double-layer of big gold stickers with high-tack adhesive that makes them impossible to remove without adhesive remaining on the cover.

This is absolutely the best compendium of Blake's work which articualtes an outstanding range of his vision. This edition acknowledges the poetry and color paintings of a consumate craftsman of the imagination on high quality, acid free paper and is nylon stitched and bound in signatures to last a lifetime. Books are rarely made this way but the Norton edition is a beautiful rendering of the first, and perhaps, primary British Romantic poet.

Jerusalem is Blake's monumental final work, 100 densely filled large plates/pages. It also seems the most Blakean (it begins with a friendly address to the reader that has had all the friendly words gouged out); not surprisingly, Blake produced only one color copy (reproduced here), which he never sold. The book overwehlms, presenting essentially all of Blake's very complicated questions about authenticity and creation through particularly abstract mythology. It is therefore a good idea to have some experience with Blake's earlier books before attempting J. The text does not exist without Blake's awesome illustrations/illuminations. While this edition is excellent, I give it only four stars because 1. the transcription of the plates does not occur on opposite pages, but rather in a separate section, and 2. the editorial assistence is scarce, and when present, oblique. These faults are noticable mainly in relation to other outstanding titles in the Blake Trust series (published later), and are hardly fatal. You're unlikely to find a better edition.

I recommend that any fan of William Blake buy this volume and the other 5 in the series. The books are beautiful, large, and handsomely bound. Each book is reproduced in full color, using a six-color printing process rather than the standard four. The pages are heavy, opaque and have a gorgous lustre indicating very high quality paper. The text of each book accompanies the color reproductions in standard typeface with very competent commentary to boot.

Why is it that on every bargain table in America you can find countless decent reproductions of The Impressionists and Picasso and Dali etc etc, but Blake's vast body of work is only available in esoteric and expensive editions? Princeton University Press has filled this void more or less affordably with a beautifully recreated series of the Prophetic Books. Now if we can just get someone to do The Illustrations to Gray and Edward Young and The Bible and Milton and Dante and and and!!!

I hate Blake. He and his Zoas and Los can go suck the ample breasts of Albion's emanation Jerusalem. At least Joyce (the only other person I know with this personal mythology splattered out for everyone) had a sense of humor. This guy, though.
Nevertheless, the illustrations are something, and there is something in the poem, I don't know exactly what it is (nor does anyone else, regardless of how convoluted and esoteric their arguments), but I'm convinced that in order to understand the least bit of these poems, you must read them all. Study them, in fact. The notes in this version are very good, and the extra illustrations are great, particularly the painting of Adam and Eve discovering Abel with Cain running off covering his newly marked forehead. Also, there is a large Lacoon, undoubtedly Blake's best thing. (I don't want to call it a poem, painting, or even "work" for some reason).

Try as I might, I haven't come up with the blend of radical individualism thwarted by universal awareness which would make this kind of book an intellectual treat for most people. I have read the poems by William Blake (just a few thousand lines, really) that are in this book before, and I even compared the abridged copy of his poems which I've had for years with a complete text from the library to discover what I could about the process of selection. Most of this is still a big mystery to a lot of people, and buying this book was my first attempt to get the whole picture of what a lot of professors might think about a single work, which is printed on plates numbered 1, then 1 to 8, 8*, 9 to 32, 32*, 33 to 46, then a Preface, copy B, plate 2, and even a plate f, followed by variations of the pictures which were on plate 13 and other Supplementary Illustrations. I had some trouble making out words on the colored plates, so the most educational part of the book for me is the printed text with notes from pages 111 to 217.

Milton is a great figure in English literature, and the great poems which place Satan and God in a struggle that makes Adam and Eve seem like minor characters are the intellectual context for Blake's effort to write a poem using Milton to write about things that minor characters wouldn't even want to talk about. Things don't really start happening for me until plate 12, "According to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius/Who is the eternal all-protecting Divine Humanity" that Milton actually rose up and said, "I go to Eternal Death!" Don't expect to meet anyone saying such things on our streets. This attempt to be instructive in the art of self-annihilation produces one of the great intellectual puzzles of eternal questions, which attempt not to apply to a particular place and time. My appreciation of John Milton and William Blake is more concerned with their ideas than with artistic techniques. The importance of Blake was suggested, more than it was demonstrated, by Theodore Roszak in THE MAKING OF A COUNTER CULTURE, Chapter VIII, "Eyes of Flesh, Eyes of Fire," which observes that a "perfectly sensible interpretation . . . would tell us, for example, that the poet Blake, under the influence of Swedenborgian mysticism, developed a style based on esoteric visionary correspondences . . . Etc. Etc. Footnote." (Roszak, p. 239). What really impressed me was the intellectual context established in the Bibliographical Notes, at the end of THE MAKING OF A COUNTER CULTURE, which states, "Anything Blake ever wrote seems supremely relevant to the search for alternative realities." (p. 302). The radical element of that thought needs to be understood in a way that affirms the religious significance of what Blake was trying to accomplish, and other scholars might overlook how this search in Blake's work might oppose their own assumptions about our cultural inheritance. Harold Bloom, in BLAKE'S APOCALYPSE, (1963, shortly before the radical part of the sixties) said "The dark Satanic Mills have nothing to do with industrialism, but" poetically pick the most common example for why those who are bored might want to complain of "The same dull round, even of a universe, would soon become a mill with complicated wheels." (Bloom, p. 305). There are a lot of names to explain, as Bloom does in his book, and the scholars employed by Tate Gallery Publications for the production of this book display an extraordinary amount of work on this project for that purpose, and the intellectual puzzles are what remains mysterious even after learning what knowledge is available.

At the heart of the poem, "Milton," is the question of what such a character might mean to William Blake, and how, long after Milton's death, he might be of some use. A lot of works have been written to give an author the opportunity to say something that he wouldn't have otherwise had a chance to say, and this book seems to be one of the unique cases of a work which tries to say something that no one else is saying. Instead of treating Milton like anyone who had been dead for more than a hundred years, the treatment of Milton's thought also supposes that it exists through an "Emanation, Sixfold presumably because he had three wives and three daughters." (Bloom, p. 308). Bloom thinks this book is a result of "a complex relation of responsibility to what he has made, though his creation is in torment because scattered through the creation." (p. 308). After John Milton had become blind, his wives and daughters represented a tremendous portion of his remaining contact with the world.

Walter Kaufmann, in LIFE AT THE LIMITS, considered a sonnet by the blind Milton about a dream in which one of his wives, who had died, was seen by him "Brought back to me like Alcestis from the grave." The reality expressed in the final line of that poem, "I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night," seemed to Kaufmann to be "the most powerful last line of any English short poem." (LIFE AT THE LIMITS, p. 75). Blake approached this situation, in which picturing another person might be considered the strongest link with any reality, with what modern readers might consider an unctiously religious picture on plate 15, with the caption (explained on p. 139 with, "The giving up of selfhood to achieve a more inclusive sense of self is essential for the artist to create" which isn't so scary if it is only applied to artists and monks): "To annihilate the Self-[there is a foot here in the picture]-hood of Deceit & False Forgiveness." Then plate 16 starts with "In those three females whom his Wives, & those three whom his Daughters/Had represented and containd. that they might be resume'd / By giving up of Selfhood:" This poetic division of a single poet into six male-female relationships is the most surprising thing in the poem, for me. Trying to apply it to religion states a much more radical understanding of what religion has to offer than most people expect if they merely go to church, which seems to be one of Roszak's points about how our culture accepts religion by making it strictly mainstream, totally "God Bless America" as the most popular current phrase goes. Much of the scholarship on the creation of Blake's large works notes how uncommercial it was in Blake's day, as "Hayley discouraged him from anything other than `the meer drudgery of business' (p. 14)" and this book tries to make that picture perfectly clear.

In one of the few small works at the end of this book, Blake complained:

The Classics, it is the Classics! / & not Goths nor Monks, that / Desolate Europe with Wars. (p. 264)

I feel the same way, complaining about some books, but Blake assumed a society in which people were actually being taught things like a Platonic belief in forms, and the Classics were a large element of what seemed bad to him. He might have felt differently if he ever had a chance to observe our formless void, where any claim to wisdom is highly suspect. We can only look the other way.

Princeton University Press has thoroughly impressed me with this series. Using higher quality paper than I've ever seen in publishing, along with an unheard-of *six* color printing process, they have reproduced the colors like never before. In addition to the color plates, a full reprint of the text is included in typescript, as well as informed and thoughtful commentary. Well done! Too bad the hardback is out of print (or was at the time of this review).

I had a difficult time tracking this book down. Every bookstore I went to told me the book was on reorder. Not sure if this was an excuse or not, but several stores did tell me they had them in stock and they went fast. oh well. I did eventually find the book (right here on-line). So I made it a point to come back to Amazon and tell the world about the book.

Whenever I buy a book, which is fairly often as I develop commercial Web sites. I take the time to compare the book to other similar books. So how does Netscape Developer's Guide compare to other books out there? Extremely well. No other book covered as much ground and made so much sense. (800 pages of pure heaven) No other book had single sections that were worth the price of the book alone (Netscape Developers Guide has three sections that are certainly worth the price of the book, even if they had been the only sections in the book. The sections are the JavaScript, LiveConnect and LiveWire sections.) And yes. It has been a long time since I read a book with so much to rave about.

Finally a book that really TEACHES all the development stuff you need to master Netscape technologies. Buying this book is like getting 5 books for the price of 1. You get comprehensive coverage of JavaScript that is better (and more useful) than Goodman's JavaScript Bible. You get awesome coverage of Netscape plug-ins that is much much much better than Programming Netscape Plug-ins. You get terrific coverage of LiveWire that is totally better than the Netscape LiveWire SourceBook. You also get first-rate coverage of Netscape Internet Foundation Classes/Java Foundation Classes and LiveConnect that no other book I've seen covers as well

Finally a book for developer's that makes sense! After I bought and read this book cover to cover, I cleaned off my desk. Instead of 4 different books covering the tech in this book, I now have 1 book that I love! I use this book to help me with minor (and major) development crisises every single day. Even a penny-pincher like me will openly admit that Netscape ONE Developer's Guide is certainly worth your time and money. This is one of two different books that I've purchased by this author. Another great book to get if you haven't already is Web Publishing Unleashed Professional Reference

This children's book is dedicated to eighteenth century British poet and artist William Blake. A well-deserved winner of the 1982 Newberry Medal and a Caldecott Honor Book, this work consists of a series of catchy poems with very satisfying and detailed illustrations to complement them.
Each poem has a rhyme scheme of sorts that make them sound clever, especially when read aloud. While each poem addresses a different topic, all the poems relate to each other collectively because they center on the comfortable and cozy William Blake's Inn. Every character and animal appears more than once throughout the book, and they stay at the inn.
One poem that stood out of my mind is entitled "The King of Cats Sends a Postcard to His Wife." The illustration of the poem shows the cat sitting at the breakfast table with William Blake. One part of postcard written by the "King of Cats" said: "Have you set the kittens free?/ Do they sometimes ask for me?/Is our catnip growing tall?/Did you patch the garden wall?" I thought this portion was interesting because it seems as though a cat away from home would be concerned about these sorts of things (if indeed cats possessed human qualities).
I would say that the illustrations are what maintained my interest throughout the book. Each illustration has yellow and tan hues, and some of the backgrounds evoke cartoon-like visions of London in William Blake's time. The illustrations are all very detailed, making it necessary to flip through the book more than once to fully appreciate them.
Although this book is designed for children, I would recommend this book to people of all ages. Although children would not understand the poems due to a somewhat difficult vocabulary, they will enjoy the wonderfully detailed illustrations and smooth rhyme of the poetry. Most adults would appreciate the book as well because of the excellent illustrations and magical poetry that A Visit to William Blake's Inn has to offer.

A vsisit to William Blakes Inn is one of my favorite books ever. In a clever turn, nanct willard had turned the more famous characters from Blakes poetry into guest and attendents at his "Inn"" Angels make the bed, Dragons bake the bread,Tiger,tiger loses its strength,all adorned with gorgeous illustartions from alic and martin provensen. In the brief introduction,Ms willard explains how she became attracted to william Blake,then what led her to this book. My children even at a very young age have love this book. It's poetic scheme is simple yet elegant, which makes it also fun for the adult reading and challenging enough for a early grade reader.A wonderful, funfilled chidrens classic.And, Ms Willard is correct:poetry IS the best medicine.

When I was a child, I read A Visit to William Blake's Inn and it inspired the poet within myself. Now as an adult, I still find the imaginative poetry within this book to permeate my thoughts. The colorful imagery painted within its text matches perfectly to the book's charming illustrations. William Blake's Inn is a must for the collector of prized children's literature.

Very good mystery that kept me guessing at the identity of the villain. At the mid-point of the book, the carpet was pulled out from under me and I plunged headlong into a world of new horror. A world that Blake created with a masterful blend of fact and fiction. By the final chapters, I couldn't pull myself from the pages. I could feel the intensity of the story and the peril to the hero as the book kept me awake, hoping for a ray of goodness to arrive.

Excellent mystery and suspense keep your attention as the villain in this story nips at your fears. I recommend the introduction for history buffs.

A new twist on a classic horror character that makes you wonder if the werewolf truely exists. The crime story holds your suspense. The action haunts your dreams and the ending makes you cheer for the triumph of the human spirit. Kudos. Kudos.

A small book but of good value. Very useful to see the full color plates that Blake had designed along with the text. The combination of the two increased my enjoyment of the work. The poetry is a bit obtuse and requires multiple readings to really extract what Blake was saying.

Anyone else notice the parallels between Blake's illuminated text and the universal origins described in the recently uncovered scrolls contained in the Nag Hammadi Library, the ones that are the oldest origional records of the words of Jesus Christ in the Secret Book of James? From the ignorant splitting from the undescribable origional of the lesser and jealous "God" (arguably the Old Testament's Jehova) to the metaphor of the chain, it seems as if they could be mirror images. The interesting part is that the Nag Hammadi library was discovered in 1947- the same year the Dead Sea Scrolls were found-- and has been dated back to approximately 50 AD. Almost all other Gnostic writings had long been destroyed by the early Church. Read into this what you may, but Blake most probably never read this particular text. Personally, I take this as proof of at least authenticity, and moreover that Blake was in greater alignment, more like Christ, if you will, than most humans so far. I bet he could make a killer salad.

Blake's "The [First] Book of Urizen" is an incredible poetical and visual depiction of the rise of the flesh and the implications of being bound to our bodies. Particulalry interesting because the book manages to depict an occurance that, according to Blake himself, is impossible to describe. The use of the metaphorical tool of a mythology by the book comes as close as one could expect from a peice of writing to achieving this depiction (the rest, appropriately enough, is up to our imagination). It is this undertaking of what seems to be an impossible task (that of attempting to represent the metaphysical through the physical) that shows this poem's bravery.