The Urizen books

the long version

In Lambeth in the 1790's, against a background of war and revolution in the American colonies and in Europe, and at home the denial of civil liberties and emergent radicalism, William Blake composed three uncompromising books in illuminated printing with which to present alternative accounts of creation and the beginning of social and religious oppression. These books are chapters from Blake's 'Bible of Hell'. Urizen, the Book of Los and Ahania set out to describe the dissemination of the autocratic mythology of Urizen, Blake's inflexibly rationalist and myopic law-giver. The message is often obscure but it is a feature of this edition that much of Blake's meaning is recovered by relating his words and images to the events and circumstances with which he and his few early readers were familiar. The works stand, more than has subsequently been thought, as Blake's sensible and considered response to the difficult times of their composition.