BLAKE, Wiliam (author and illustrator). Songs of Innocence and of Experience. London The Trianon Press for the William Blake Trust. 1954

8vo. Original quarter publisher’s tan calf-backed brown boards, spine lettered longitudinally in gilt, top edges gilt, in publisher’s board slipcase with tan leather trim; pp. [69], printed throughout on rectos; with 31 fine, and pretty, coloured plates in collotype and stencil; internally and externally extremely clean and crisp with slight browning to gutter of inner hinges, in a clean and attractive publisher’s slipcase with small wear to leather at spine ends, and some corner rubbing.

First edition thus, numbered 507 (in red ink), being one of a total edition of only 1,600 copies on “Arches” pure rag, watermarked, paper; one of the 800 copies for distribution in the United Kingdom by Faber and Faber.

This is a facsimile of Blake’s original manuscript, lent by the Library of Congress (through the generosity of Mr. Lessing J. Rosenwald) to the master printers Messrs Beaufumé and Duval in Paris. The illuminated pages were reproduced by the collotype and stencil process.