Books

1885. Edmonton: William Muir, 1885. 2 vols., 4to, 34; 30 leaves, hand-colored, with the original blue-gray wrappers as issued, enclosed in a modern quarter-blue morocco folding box lettered in gilt. Wrappers rebacked and lightly repaired, some closed tears remaining, fine copies within. § Limited to around 50 copies of each, "Innocence" inscribed "No. 0 Pearson's copy" and "Experience" inscribed "for The Times". These are amongst the most alluring and successful of Muir’s facsimiles. Songs of Innocence was taken from the Pearson copy and he is recorded at the end as the Publisher in London in 1884 but his death caused Muir to take the project to Quaritch who distributed the whole series. Songs of Experience is taken from the Beckford copy. The general title to both works is found at the end of Experience. Bentley, BB, 249 a and 249 d. Loosely inserted in the box is a prospectus from John Pearson for a series of facsimiles after Blake, and a 4-pp ALS from Muir to the…

A collection of illustrated poems by William Blake exploring the dichotomy of innocence and experience.