Night Thoughts (Folio Society Limited Edition)

A$1,600 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

Limited edition

YOUNG, Edward (illus. William Blake). Night Thoughts: The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, Immortality. London: The Folio Society, 2005. 3 vols. Thick elephant folio. Two main volumes bound in quarter goatskin and illustrated cloth. Spines lettered in gilt. Cover illustration by Neil Gower. Contents printed on Natural Evolution paper by Castelli Bolis. Accompanied by envelope containing three loose prints. Companion commentary volume by Robyn Hamlyn. Vol. I II: 548 pp. across two volumes; companion volume: [vi], xx, 362 pp. Housed in purple buckram solander case lettered in gilt. First Folio Society edition. First and only complete publication of Blake's watercolour illustrations for Night Thoughts . Limited to 750 numbered copies, this being number 484. Edward Young's The Complaint: or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, Immortality , published between 1742 and 1745, was one of the most widely read poems of the eighteenth century — a long meditation on mortality, grief, and the consolations of faith, written in the shadow of the deaths of his wife and stepdaughter. Its influence on the Romantic movement was substantial. When William Blake undertook his illustrations for a projected edition in the 1790s, he produced over 500 watercolours. This produced a body of work of extraordinary ambition and visual intensity, among the most powerful he ever made. The published edition of 1797 reproduced only 43 of these as engravings; the project was a commercial failure, and th

• Binding: Hardcover

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