Stevenson - Blake: The Complete Poems

Blake

The Complete Poems

LONGMAN ANNOTATED ENGLISH POETS

General Editors: John Barnard and Paul Hammond Founding Editor: F. W. Bateson

Titles available in paperback:

BLAKE: THE COMPLETE POEMS

(Third Edition)

Edited by W. H. Stevenson

DRYDEN: SELECTED POEMS

Edited by Paul Hammond and David Hopkins

THE POEMS OF ANDREW MARVELL

(Revised Edition)

Edited by Nigel Smith

MILTON: PARADISE LOST

(Second Edition)

Edited by Alastair Fowler

MILTON: COMPLETE SHORTER POEMS

(Second Edition)

Edited by John Carey

SPENSER: THE FAERIE QUEENE

(Revised Second Edition)

Edited by A. C. Hamilton

TENNYSON: A SELECTED EDITION

(Revised Edition)

Edited by Christopher Ricks

Blake

The Complete Poems

Edited by

W. H. Stevenson

Third Edition

First published 1971 by Pearson Education Limited

First paperback edition 1972

Second edition 1989

Third edition published 2007

Published 2014 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1971, 1989, 2007, Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4058-3280-9 (pbk)

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A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

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(pencil, by John Linnell [17921882])

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Longman Annotated English Poets was launched in 1965 with the publication of Kenneth Allotts edition of The Poems of Matthew Arnold. F. W. Bateson wrote that the new series is the first designed to provide university students and teachers, and the general reader with complete and fully annotated editions of the major English poets. That remains the aim of the series, and Batesons original vision of its policy remains essentially the same. Its concern is primarily with the meaning of the extant texts in their various contexts. The two other main principles of the series were that the text should be modernized and the poems printed as far as possible in the order in which they were composed.

These broad principles still govern the series. Its primary purpose is to provide an annotated text giving the reader any necessary contextual information. However, flexibility in the detailed application has proved necessary in the light of experience and the needs of a particular case (and each poet is by definition, a particular case).

First, proper glossing of a poets vocabulary has proved essential and not something which can be taken for granted. Second, modernization has presented difficulties, which have been resolved pragmatically, trying to reach a balance between sensitivity to the text in question and attention to the needs of a modern reader. Thus, to modernize Brownings text has a double redundancy: Victorian conventions are very close to modern conventions, and Browning had firm ideas on punctuation. Equally, to impose modern pointing on the ambiguities of Marvell would create a misleading clarity. Third, in the very early days of the series Bateson hoped that editors would be able in many cases to annotate a textus receptus. That has not always been possible, and where no accepted text exists or where the text is controversial, editors have been obliged to go back to the originals and create their own text. The series has taken, and will continue to take, the opportunity not only of providing thorough annotations not available elsewhere, but also of making important scholarly textual contributions where necessary. A case in point is the edition of The Poems of Tennyson by Christopher Ricks, the Second Edition of which (1987) takes into account a full collation of the Trinity College Manuscripts, not previously available for an edition of this kind. Yet the series primary purpose remains annotation.

The requirements of a particular author take precedence over principle. It would make little sense to print Herberts Temple in the order of composition even if it could be established. Where Ricks rightly decided that Tennysons reader needs to be given the circumstances of composition, the attitude to Tennyson and his circle, allusions, and important variants, a necessary consequence was the exclusion of twentieth-century critical responses. Milton, however, is a very different case. John Carey and Alastair Fowler, looking to the needs of their readers, undertook synopses of the main lines of the critical debate over Miltons poetry. Finally, chronological ordering by date of composition will almost always have a greater or lesser degree of speculation or arbitrariness. The evidence is usually partial, and is confused further by the fact that poets do not always write one poem at a time and frequently revise at a later period than that of composition.

John Barnard

Paul Hammond

We are indebted to Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd for permission to reproduce copyright material from Hidden Riches by D. Hirst on p. 876.

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

Collection of Robert N Essick. Copyright 2004 the William Blake Archive. Used with permission; Plate 17 Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library.