The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, better known simply as Night-Thoughts, is a long poem by Edward Young published in nine parts (or "nights") between 1742 and 1745. It was illustrated with notable engravings by William Blake.
The poem is written in blank verse. It describes the poet's musings on death over a series of nine "nights" in which he ponders the loss of his wife and friends, and laments human frailties. The best-known line in the poem (at the end of "Night I") is the adage "procrastination is the thief of time", which is part of a passage in which the poet discusses how quickly life and opportunities can slip away.
Night-Thoughts had a very high reputation for many years after its publication, but is now best known for a major series of illustrations by William Blake in 1797.[ citation needed ] A lesser-known set of illustrations was created by Thomas Stothard in 1799.
The nine nights are each a poem of their own. They are: "Life, Death, and Immortality" (dedicated to Arthur Onslow); "Time, Death, Friendship" (dedicated to Spencer Compton); "Narcissa" (dedicated to Margaret Bentinck); "The Christian Triumph" (dedicated to Philip Yorke); "The Relapse" (dedicated to George Lee); "The Infidel Reclaim'd" (in two parts, "Glories and Riches" and "The Nature, Proof, and Importance of Immortality"; dedicated to Henry Pelham); "Virtue's Apology; or, The Man of the World Answered" (with no dedication); and "The Consolation" (dedicated to Thomas Pelham-Holles).
In his 1791 book, Life of Samuel Johnson , James Boswell called Night-Thoughts "the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced".
William Blake was commissioned in 1795 to illustrate Night-Thoughts for a major new edition of the poem to be published by Richard Edwards. Blake began by making a series of 537 watercolour illustrations from which he planned to engrave about 200 for publication. The first volume – with forty-three engravings by Blake – was published in 1797, but it was a commercial failure and the expensive publishing venture was abandoned.
Because the principal evidence of Blake's work on these illustrations was the comparatively short series of engravings, art history has been slow to recognise the significance of the project within Blake's œuvre. In 1980, the Oxford University Press began publication of a projected five-volume scholarly edition of Blake's version of Night-Thoughts, edited by J. E. Grant et al.; two volumes have so far appeared and the fifth has apparently been abandoned. [1] In 2005, the Folio Society published in two volumes a fine edition facsimile accompanied by a commentary by Robyn Hamlyn. The Folio Society facsimile was the first (and thus far only) time that all 537 of Blake's illustrations have been published together in full colour. [2]
Night Thoughts public domain audiobook at LibriVox | Authority control: National |
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William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".
William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Rev Robert Blair was a Scottish poet. His fame rests upon his poem The Grave, which, in a later printing was illustrated by William Blake.
Thomas Bewick was an English wood-engraver and natural history author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving cutlery, making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating children's books. He gradually turned to illustrating, writing and publishing his own books, gaining an adult audience for the fine illustrations in A History of Quadrupeds.
Edward Young was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts, a series of philosophical writings in blank verse, reflecting his state of mind following several bereavements. It was one of the most popular poems of the century, influencing Goethe and Edmund Burke, among many others, with its notable illustrations by William Blake.
William Hayley was an English writer, best known as the biographer of his friend William Cowper.
The Germ, thoughts towards nature in art and literature (1850) was a periodical established by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to disseminate their ideas. The magazine was edited by William Michael Rossetti. The Germ was renamed Art and Poetry, being Thoughts towards Nature, conducted principally by Artists for its last two issues. It was not a success, only surviving for four issues between January and April 1850.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases: a few first copies were printed and illuminated by Blake himself in 1789; five years later, he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Blake was also a painter before the creation of Songs of Innocence and Experience and had painted such subjects as Oberon, Titania, and Puck dancing with fairies.
Sonnet 27 is one of 154 sonnets published by William Shakespeare in a quarto titled Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609. It is a part of the Fair Youth group of sonnets, and the first in a group of five sonnets that portray the poet in solitude and meditating from a distance on the young man. A theme of the first two of the group regards the night and restlessness, which is a motif also found in the sonnets of Petrarch.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Vala, or The Four Zoas is one of the uncompleted prophetic books by the English poet William Blake, begun in 1797. The eponymous main characters of the book are the Four Zoas, who were created by the fall of Albion in Blake's mythology. It consists of nine books, referred to as "nights". These outline the interactions of the Zoas, their fallen forms and their Emanations. Blake intended the book to be a summation of his mythic universe but, dissatisfied, he abandoned the effort in 1807, leaving the poem in a rough draft and its engraving unfinished. The text of the poem was first published, with only a small portion of the accompanying illustrations, in 1893, by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats and his collaborator, the English writer and poet Edwin John Ellis, in their three-volume book The Works of William Blake.
The Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus." With selections from his poems and other writings is a two-volume work on the English painter and poet William Blake, first published in 1863. The first volume is a biography and the second a compilation of Blake's poetry, prose, artwork and illustrated manuscript.
The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, often referred as The Triple Hecate or simply Hecate, is a 1795 work of art by the English artist and poet William Blake which depicts Enitharmon, a female character in his mythology, or Hecate, a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess of magic and the underworld. The work presents a nightmarish scene with fantastic creatures.
George Daniel (1789–1864) was an English author of miscellaneous works and book collector.
The spelling of William Shakespeare's name has varied over time. It was not consistently spelled any single way during his lifetime, in manuscript or in printed form. After his death the name was spelled variously by editors of his work, and the spelling was not fixed until well into the 20th century.
The William Blake Archive is a digital humanities project started in 1994, a first version of the website was launched in 1996. The project is sponsored by the Library of Congress and supported by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Rochester. Inspired by the Rossetti Archive, the archive provides digital reproductions of the various works of William Blake, a prominent Romantic-period poet, artist, and engraver, alongside annotation, commentary and scholarly materials related to Blake.
"The Grave" is a blank verse poem by the Scottish poet Robert Blair. It is the work for which he is primarily renowned. According to Blair, in a letter he wrote to Philip Doddridge, the greater part of the poem was composed before he became a minister, Edinburgh editor and publisher John Johnstone hola stating that it was composed whilst he was still a student, although "probably corrected and amplified by his more matured judgement". The poem, 767 lines long, is an exemplar of what became known as the school of graveyard poetry.
The Notebook of William Blake was used by William Blake as a commonplace book from c. 1787 to 1818.
The Cambridge Shakespeare is a long-running series of critical editions of William Shakespeare's works published by Cambridge University Press. The name encompasses three distinct series: The Cambridge Shakespeare (1863–1866), The New Shakespeare (1921–1969), and The New Cambridge Shakespeare (1984–present).
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as Poems and Ballads, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
