The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

This edition is a series of texts, which were written in imitation of biblical books of prophecy, but expressing the poets own personal romantic and revolutionary beliefs. It is not exactly known when the work was written. One assumes it was composed in London between 1790 and 1793 , a period of political conflict arising immediately after the French Revolution. The book is about the first person narrators visit to Hell, a concept taken by Blake from Dantes Inferno and Miltons Paradise Lost. Apart from the opening Argument and the Song of Liberty, the entire book is written in prose. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was influenced by the mysticism of Swedish theosophist Emanuel Swedenborg and is also in part a satire on Emanuel Swedenborgs writings, especially on Heaven and Hell from which Blake adapted the title. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.