Jerusalem - The Emanation of the Giant Albion: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Jerusalem - The Emanation of the Giant Albion, credited to William Blake, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Jerusalem - The Emanation of the Giant Albion, by William Blake. The epic poem Jerusalem was in Blake's own opinion his masterpiece. It is the last of the great prophetic books. Originally produced as an engraved book of 100 pages (only one copy of which was ever fully finished in the colouring), the poem develops and unifies many of the themes Blake had been exploring in earlier works. It is a complex and powerful work, full of dramatic imagery and sublime poetry. You might think of it like a poetic version of a Wagner opera. This is poetry as if your life depended on it. It is amazing how contemporary to us it feels if you compare it to what was being produced at the time. You can see in this work how it has inspired writers like Phillip Pullman in his Northern Lights trilogy. The edition read here is the first printed version of the poem - which was impossibly hard to read in the original. This then was the first opportunity to really explore it. In his introduction Blake implies that the way to experience this work is to read it aloud rather than in your head. I can only agree and this opens another dimension to what was alreay a textual and pictorial artwork. If you are interested to explore more of Blake you might contact The Blake Society. (Introduction by Nick Duncan)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Jerusalem - The Emanation of the Giant Albion
• Author credits: William Blake
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 9
• Listed recording duration: 6:53:19

Catalogue topics

• poetry
• Prophetic Book

Track guide

1. 01 - Introduction — 28:20
2. 02 - Chapter 1 Part 1 — 49:17
3. 03 - Chapter 1 Part 2 — 39:06
4. 04 - Chapter 2 Part 1 — 42:13
5. 05 - Chapter 2 Part 2 — 55:13
6. 06 - Chapter 3 Part 1 — 58:08
7. 07 - Chapter 3 Part 2 — 47:46
8. 08 - Chapter 4 Part 1 — 44:09
9. 09 - Chapter 4 Part 2 — 49:11

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.