THE COMPLAINT: OR NIGHT THOUGHTS on Life, Death & Immortality. By Edward Young. With Commentary by Robin Hamlyn.

2 Folio. Facsimile vols. + 1 8vo. Commentary. Facsimile vols. bound in half Nigerian Goatskin black leather with cloth boards, printed and blocked with designs by David Eccles based on William Blake’s original drawings, silver lettering to spines, matching silver lettered title lable to upper boards; Commentary vol. in original buckram, with prospectus, enclosed in buckram covered solander box, very minor bumping to tails of boards. From the Library of Jerrold Northrop Moore. With the prospectus loosely inserted.No. 303 of a Limited Edition of 1000 Numbered and 20 Lettered Copies.In 1795 William Blake received a commission from a London bookseller to provide illustrations for a engraved edition of one of the most popular poems of the 18th century-Edward Young’s ‘The Complaint .’ It was by far the most notable undertaking of Blake’s artistic career to this point, a perfect marriage of illustrator and subject. Blake threw himself into the challenge, producing 537 seperate watercolour designs-an illustration for approximately every twenty lines of verse. Only 43 of Blake’s designs were ever engraved, which were printed in a single volume in 1797. Other illustrations were added to later editions, but this 2005 production published by the Folio Society is the first ever complete facsimile edition of what Young and Blake set out to present with nearly 500 paintings representing some of Blake’s most dramatic and vibrant work, positioned and coloured exactly as intended, - A truly sumptious publication. US$891.…