America: A Prophecy

About this book

Flames rise through a revolutionary world. Chains are broken, angels struggle and the figure of Orc embodies rebellion itself. For William Blake, America's fight for independence unfolds on the scale of a myth about freedom and oppression.

Blake engraved the poem and its imagery on the same plates. Figures such as Orc and the forces that oppose him move through scenes dense with serpents, vegetation, flame and human bodies. Blake recasts the War of Independence as a struggle between forces within his own mythology of liberation.