HS DP LangLit: Songs of Innocence and Experience

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  Audio Book: Librivox Songs of Innocence and Experience

View 70 images in sequence of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Title

Songs of innocence and of experience, shewing the two contrary states of the human soul.

Contributor Names

Blake, William, 1757-1827.

Robinson, Henry Crabb, 1775-1867, former owner.

Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress)

Created / Published

[London, W. Blake, 1794]

 

• eBook: Project Gutenberg

• British Library: Songs of Innocence and Experience

• British Library: Blake's two chimney sweepers

  Songs of Innocence and of Experience contains two poems about young chimney sweepers: one in 'Innocence' and one in 'Experience'. Dr Linda Freedman considers how this allows for a complex, subtle engagement with the figure of the sweep.

• British Library: William Blake’s Chimney Sweeper poems: William Blake’s Chimney Sweeper poems: a close reading

  George Norton shows how William Blake’s Chimney Sweeper poems highlight the injustice and brutality suffered by child chimney sweeps in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

• TATE: Songs of Innocence

• TATE: Songs of Experience

• Poetry Foundation: William Blake

Source: Aquinas College

Early Editions

The William Blake Archive provides links to 13 digitized copies of early editions:

• Copy B, 1789, 1794 (British Museum)
• Copy C, 1789, 1794 (Library of Congress)
• Copy F, 1789, 1794 (Yale Center for British Art)
• Copy E, 1789, 1794, 1795, c. 1832 (Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery)
• Copy A, 1795 (British Museum)
• Copy L, 1795 (Yale Center for British Art)
• Copy N, 1795 (Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery)
• Copy R, c. 1795, c. 1808 (The Fitzwilliam Museum)
• Copy T, 1789, 1794, 1818 (British Museum)
• Copy V, 1821 (Morgan Library and Museum)
• Copy Y, 1825 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Copy Z, 1826 (Library of Congress)
• Copy AA, 1826 (The Fitzwilliam Museum)