THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Your chance to own this magnificent Limited Edition facsimile with 537 illustrations by William Blake. The only colour facsimile ever published. Last few copies remaining.

In 1795 William Blake received a commission from a London bookseller to provide illustrations for an engraved edition of Edward Young’s The Complaint: or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality. It was by far the most notable undertaking of Blake’s artistic career to this point, a perfect marriage of illustrator and subject.

The prodigious number of watercolours Blake produced – 537 in all – meant there was one illustration for approximately every 20 lines of verse, an extraordinary achievement in itself. Yet the beauty of the work is what truly astonishes. Page after page, you cannot help but be moved by the passion and sweep of Blake’s imagination. For Night Thoughts, this most singular of artists produced a breathtaking procession of individual portraits: the divine and the damned, arresting in their conception, captivating in their execution. Blake’s watercolours do not just ornament the panels of Young’s text, they dominate and envelop them. From the ringer serpent of Nature to the Soul staggering ‘at Futurity’ at the edge of a mountain–top; from the bearded figure of Death tearing the pillow from behind the sleeper’s head, to depictions of Christ the Redeemer and Creator, these are images of astonishing inventiveness and emotional power.

To create the original pages, the text was cut out from a first edition of Young’s poem and mounted in a panel on the centre of each painting. The effect was stunning, but the project had to be abandoned because of financial constrains. Only 43 of Blake’s designs were ever engraved, printed in a single volume in 1797. Nearly 500 paintings, which included some of Blake’s most dramatic and vibrant work, remained unpublished, until this Folio Society facsimile was created.

This is the only time all 537 of Blake’s watercolours have ever been published together in colour. Of the 1,000 numbered copies produced by The Folio Society, less than 300 remain available to order.