Textual history

The shape of Blake's enterprise

The production of the version of Songs of Innocence and of Experience used in most modern editions took place over a period of thirty-five years, with Blake acting as his own publisher.

Most scholars agree that:

• Songs of Innocence was written in 1789
• Five years later, the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, appeared in 1794, for which Blake produced a new illustration for the title page.

There is some disagreement among scholars about Blake's intention. Some believe that the Songs of Innocence were originally a separate project and thus the Songs of Innocence and of Experience as we have them now were not conceived and planned as an entity.

Moveable texts

Whatever the case, Blake did not have settled opinions about the category to which some of his poems belonged:

• Four of the songs belonging initially to Songs of Innocence
  • The Schoolboy
  • The Little Girl Lost
  • The Little Girl Found
  • The Voice of the Ancient Bard

were moved to the Songs of Experience in the 1794 version.

In addition, when comparing the surviving copies of Songs of Innocence (1789) and  Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) there is considerable variation in the positioning of the poems in each sequence. It seems that Blake wished to resist a simplistic pairing of poems from the two sequences.

The final poem of Songs of Experience, To Tirzah, seems to have been added possibly as many as twelve years after the first appearance of the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience. It is understood as summarising the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience i.e. the entire work.

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