The Four Zoas: A Photographic Facsimile of the Manuscript With Commentary on the Illuminations

This photographic facsimile and restoration of the pictorial details of illuminated manuscript of William Blake's great epic prophecy, Vala or The Four Zoas, now makes the whole work more available than it has ever been - a manuscript so reased and scribbled over, expecially where the drawings represented what Blake called "naked beauty displayed," that critical reading of the designs, and hence of the related text, has been conjectural and incomplete. Since the work itself is, in some senses, incomplete - Blake himself seems never to have made a "fair copy" that would indicate his final intentions - any attempt to deal exhaustively with the interaction of illuminations and text would require volumes of explication and speculation. The present commentary, without offering a full and continuous reading of the work, calls attention to all the details that can be made out, supplementing the facsimile with tracings and sketches in which faint or hidden lines have been enhanced and restored through various methods, including infarared photography. -From the dust jacket