"Reader's Guides" provide a comprehensive starting point for any advanced student, giving an overview of the context, criticism and influence of key works. Each guide also offers students fresh critical insights and provides a practical introduction to close reading and to analysing literary language and form. They provide up-to-date, authoritative but accessible guides to the most commonly studied classic texts. William Blake is a romantic poet who remains popular today, in part because his exceptional insight into psychological, political and social issues remains powerfully relevant. The "Reader's Guide" begins by introducing Blake's major themes including religious, political and social issues and then moves on to reading key works, including "Songs of Innocence and Experience" and "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". It offers an invaluable introduction to reading Blake's poetry and includes sections on its contexts, language and style, critical reception and adaptation and influence and finally, an annotated guide to further reading.

Author Biography

Jonathan Roberts is the Paul O'Flinn Memorial Early Career Fellow in Romanticism at Oxford Brookes University. He previously worked as a college lecturer at the University of Oxford.