Songs of Innocence

This lyric anthology evokes a predominantly pastoral world prior to the dualisms of adult consciousness. Human, natural, and divine states of being have yet to be separated. The child is the chief representative of this condition; other recurrent figures, such as the shepherd and lamb, point ultimately to the figure of Christ as the incarnation of the unity of innocence. In a few poems, the rhetoric, irony, and divided consciousness of experience begin to insinuate themselves into the landscape of innocence. In 1794, Blake combined Innocence with its contrary companion, the Songs of Experience, to create the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Blake etched the Songs of Innocence in relief, with white-line work in some designs, on thirty-one plates in 1789, the date on the title page. The first printing, also of 1789, produced sixteen (or possibly seventeen) copies: U (black ink) and possibly untraced copy V; I, J, X, and "Innocence" of Songs of innocence and of Experience copy F (green ink); A-H, K-M, Z (yellow ochre or raw sienna ink). In addition, the "Innocence" section of what would later become Songs of Innocence and of Experience copies B-E were printed in this first session. After 1794, the printing history of Innocence becomes complex because Blake began printing it with Experience to form copies of the combined Songs while continuing also to issue Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience separately. Complicating matters further are the facts that some separately issued copies of Innocence were combined with Experience by collectors and dealers, and that copies of Innocence now separate were once part of copies of the combined Songs.

In 1795, Blake printed both sections of Songs of Innocence and of Experience copies A and R. In a separate print-run of the same year, he printed eight sets of Innocence and nine sets of Experience impressions to form Innocence copy N, the "Innocence" section of combined Songs copy J, the "Experience" section of combined Songs copies J, O, and S, and both sections of combined Songs I, L, M, and BB. The "Innocence" section of combined Songs copy O was once joined with the "Experience" section of combined Songs copy K; untraced Innocence copy W was probably once joined with the "Experience" section of combined Songs copy N. In c. 1802, Blake printed three copies of Songs of Innocence (O, R and Y printed as a single copy and later divided into incomplete copies, and the "Innocence" section of combined Songs copy P), along with two copies of Experience (the "Experience" sections of Songs of Innocence and of Experience copies P and Q). In c. 1804, he printed another three copies of Songs of Innocence (P, Q, and the "Innocence" section of combined Songs copy Q); in c. 1811 he printed two more copies (Innocence copy S and the "Innocence" section of combined Songs copy S). This was the last time Blake printed Songs of Innocence separately. Songs of Innocence copy T is posthumous, with hand coloring in imitation of copy B. No two copies of Songs of Innocence share the same arrangement of the plates.

Between 1818 and 1827, Blake always printed Innocence and Experience as parts of the combined Songs. In seven of the eight copies produced, the plate order remained the same (see Songs of Innocence and of Experience).