Mark Crosby and Robert N. Essick, eds., Genesis: William Blake’s Last Illuminated Work

Abstract

The Crosby-Essick edition begins, appropriately, with the facsimile itself. This is a beautiful piece of work, bringing out even very faint pencil lines, faithfully reproducing the delicate watercolors of the first two pages, and presenting the reader with pages of the size and approximate texture of the original. The editors’ commentary and notes appear in the last part of the book (23-51), and I will discuss these along with the images themselves, starting with the two title pages, one of which is considered a substitute for the other.