Michael Phillips's beautiful and professionally-bound University of Chicago edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell appears to be a cover to cover facsimile of the Bodelian's copy. I mean "cover to cover" quite literally: the image posted on Amazon and the publisher's website is a full-color photographic reproduction of a nineteenth-century binding. Upon opening the book you will find a full-color reproduction of the inside cover. The next page -- which is a blank page in the original -- is again reproduced exactly -- so that the cover shows wear marks, and front matter shows ink marks, book stamps, water stains, and all.

This edition, then, is an exact reproduction of Copy B of Blake's Marriage from cover to cover, with the addition of Phillips's extensive introduction, textual transcription, notes, commentary, a checklist of copies, and bibliography. There's simply nothing quite like it; not even the edition published by the William Blake Trust for the Illuminated Books series. Owning this book is as close to owning an original copy of the Marriage as possible.

The William Blake Archive does reproduce Copy B of the Marriage with a textual transcription, so that you can preview the specific contents of the reproductions in Phillips's edition there. This edition, however -- being a full, cover to cover reproduction of the book owned by the Bodelian -- includes some additional images that are not part of the same sequence of images available on the Blake archive website, though these are available elsewhere on the site. These additional images include reproductions from nine copies of what is Plate 14 in the Bodelian copy with alternate copies of a few other plates such as "A Song of Liberty" and one of the memorable fancies, in addition to a copy of "Our End is Come" preceding the text of Marriage. More details about Copy B are available on the William Blake Archive website.

Overall, this edition of Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell is well worth the price and a good purchase even if you already own the William Blake Trust's edition, both for its originality of presentation and for Phillips's notes and commentary. This volume may represent the future for reproductions of Blake's works: professional, full-color facsimile editions of each individual copy.