Table of Contents:
Introductory Essay
Division I: William Blake
Division II: Blake’s Circle
Barry, James
Butts, Elizabeth
Flaxman, John
Fuseli, Henry
Hayley, William
Palmer, Samuel
Parker, James
Stedman, John Gabriel
Stothard, Thomas
Tatham, Frederick
Blake Publications and Discoveries in 2011
For me, one of the most important discoveries of 2011 was Google Scholar, which allows searches in scholarly periodicals and books. Under “Blake” for 2009–11 there were 48,400 entries in early November 2011, which effectively frightened me off. But I did plough through 5,950 entries under “William Blake” for 2009–11, or rather I tried to do so, but (somewhat to my relief) I was only allowed to see the first thousand.
The information is often not comprehensive, omitting pagination and sometimes even author (in which case I have had to ignore it). Entries in other scripts such as Arabic and Chinese and Greek and Hebrew and Japanese and Korean may be incompletely metamorphosed into English or any other European language or script, and the titles may be translated, but they are never transliterated.
But Google Scholar does provide wonderfully broad coverage, and a very substantial number of entries here derive from it.
An online resource which is new to me is Newspaper Archive, which advertises 120,000,000 articles and is indeed very capacious and rewarding.
The two workhorses of Blake scholarship, Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace,” which is customarily meticulous and deft, and G. E. Bentley, Jr., “William Blake and His Circle,” are occasionally capable of a caracole: the sketch of The Olympic Devils, implausibly attributed to Blake, “attracted 17 bidders, 16 of whom were fortunate.”Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2010,” Blake 44.4 (spring 2011): 125.
There was a scattering of new references to Blake in works published before Gilchrist opened the floodgates in 1863. These were in 1798 (see Young in Part III), 1800 (Hayley, Essay on Sculpture, in Part III; Tilloch in Part VI), 1801 (Hartley in Part III), 1818 (Anon., “Forged Bank-Notes,” in Part VI), 1843 (“The Chimney Sweeper” in Part IB), 1845 (Saunders in Part VI), 1846 (1846 in Part IV), 1847, 1848, 1853 (Lester in Part VI), 1853 (John Duke Coleridge in Part VI), 1856 (Arvine and Stephens in Part VI), 1857 (Symington in Part VI), 1860 (1860 in Part IB) and 1861 (Gilchrist in Part VI). Perhaps the most interesting are those of 1800 and 1818 about Blake’s connection with Tilloch’s attempt to suppress forgery of bank notes and the newly recorded advertisements of 1798 for Young’s Night Thoughts.
Numbers of Works about Blake Recorded in Blake Books (1977), Blake Books Supplement (1995), and Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly for 1992-2011
Record for |
Books [a]
including |
Editions and |
Catalogues |
Essays
including |
Reviews |
BB |
1,406 |
573 |
254 |
3,218 |
595 [b] |
BBS |
1,010 |
354 |
123 |
4,069 |
177 |
Misc. [c] |
|
|
|
|
1,951 |
1992-93 |
54 |
21 |
15 |
279 |
62 |
1994 |
50 |
16 |
5 |
234 |
84 |
1995 |
56 |
22 |
12 |
239 |
74 |
1996 |
37 |
14 |
10 |
160 |
136 |
1997 |
75 |
29 |
11 |
135 |
178 |
1998 |
69 |
32 |
6 |
233 |
59 |
1999 |
46 |
21 |
3 |
235 |
71 |
2000 |
73 |
3 |
12 |
52 |
56 |
2001 |
57 |
23 |
13 |
181 |
175 |
2002 |
52 |
26 |
6 |
208 |
45 |
2003 |
50 |
17 |
8 |
205 |
47 |
2004 |
31 |
8 |
6 |
153 |
81 |
2005 |
43 |
9 |
6 |
139 |
79 |
2006 |
110 |
48 |
11 |
237 |
41 |
2007 |
118 |
70 |
17 |
336 |
100 |
2008 |
193 |
68 |
54 |
330 |
107 |
2009 |
122 |
32 |
30 |
621 |
239 |
2010 |
180 |
78 |
13 |
313 |
78 |
2011 |
112 |
25 |
22 |
279 |
59 |
Totals |
3,944 |
1,489 |
637 |
11,856 |
4,494 |
The non-English languages recorded for Blake studies in 2011 were Arabic, Chinese, Croatian,I am told that when Yugoslavia divided into Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo (Albanian), Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, each country declared that it had its own language, and some are mutually understandable with ease. French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Montenegrin, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, and Spanish.Unlike in past years, there was no Blake publication recorded in Danish, Greek, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, or Swedish.
Note that the sudden surge of Chinese publications about Blake (Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke) does not mean that in 2011 there were suddenly more publications in Chinese than previously. It means that suddenly I have discovered how to find them. Most of the essays in Chinese are remarkably brief; twenty-six of them are only one or two pages. It is worth bearing in mind two factors about this brevity. In the first place, Chinese writing, in which one character represents a whole word, is far more concise than alphabetical writing, in which, for example, “alphabetical” requires twelve characters. In Chinese, a 5,000-word essay would require only three pages. And in the second place, candidates for the MA (a three-year degree) must publish two articles to qualify for the degree, though the quality of the essay and journal may be very modest.
More than one entry is in Arabic, which I cannot read.E.g., author illegible to me, “[Utopia or Labyrinth of Reason? William Blake’s Polemic with Francis Bacon],” about the New Atlantis and The Book of Urizen.
Doctoral dissertations noticed in 2011 are from Coimbra (2009), Exeter (2010), Harvard (2010), Indiana (2011), Michigan (2011), City University of New York (2010), Yale (2011), and York (England) (2010).
Web Sites on Blake
Web sites are a problem. New ones pop up (many), and old ones die (not many). Some sites never change, and some change frequently. In 2011 web sites devoted exclusively or significantly to Blake included:
Bentley Collection, a catalogue of the works related to Blake and his circle given in 2005 to the library of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, and subsequent additions thereto.
Blake Digital Text Project, created by Nelson Hilton, with an electronic version of The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman, the Concordance of Erdman et al., a “graphical hypertext” of Blake’s Songs, and a hypertext edition of “The Everlasting Gospel” by David Owen, plus bibliographical material.
The Blake Society (London), for lectures, a journal, and Blake advocacy.
Blake 2.0, a “community portal” devoted to Blake studies, ed. Jason Whittaker and Roger Whitson, with a blog (Zoamorphosis), podcasts, and a digital reading project.
The Cynic Sang, “the (un)official blog of the William Blake Archive,” by members of the University of Rochester archive team.
The Friends of William Blake, by Luis and Carol Garrido, with information about Blake’s burial site.
An Island in the Moon, with video, photos, and a text of the 1983 Cornell theatrical production of Joseph Viscomi, with music by Margaret LaFrance.
Project Blake, on Blake community events in London.
The William Blake Archive, ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, with searchable electronic editions of Blake’s literary and artistic works, bibliographies, collection lists, and an electronic version of The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman.
Blake’s Writings
Two prints from Songs of Innocence and of Experience (o) have been newly recorded in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the first known loose print (pl. 15) from For Children: The Gates of Paradise was offered for sale. How extraordinary that new copies of Blake prints should still turn up.
Untraced letters from Blake and to him have been newly identified below. Alas, the possibility of actually finding any of these letters is extraordinarily slight.
Printings of single poems by Blake in 1843 and 1860 are newly recorded here.
By far the most exciting newly recorded copy of a literary work by Blake is Poetical Sketches (Y). It had not been recorded at all until it was offered for sale in 2011 and acquired by Robert N. Essick. It bears manuscript corrections by Blake like those in other copies distributed by or for him, and they are identical to those in copy S sent by John Flaxman to William Hayley in April 1784. The recipient was apparently John Hawkins, Blake’s early admirer—the handwriting on the title page is his. He seems to have acquired his copy very soon after the book was printed in 1783, for the address he wrote on it (“at Mr Taylors Green St. Leicester fields”) was one where Blake lived only in 1782-84. Hawkins commissioned drawings from Blake, but this is the only Blake work he is known to have owned. This copy of Poetical Sketches helps to illuminate the most obscure period of Blake’s creative life.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, edited with an introduction and commentary by Michael Phillips (2011), is an important edition, generously illustrated with 169 reproductions, including colored prints of copies B, K, and M. These reproductions make it particularly valuable. They are accompanied by a long, detailed, and careful study of the Marriage, generously supported by useful information in the notes. The study often seems to be designed to correct, not very effectively in my view, the arguments about dates of composition, etching, and printing in Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993).
Commercial Engravings
There are ambitious if uncertainly successful essays here on the costs of Hayley’s Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802) and the hypothetical costs of colored copies of Young’s Night Thoughts (1797).
Catalogues and Bibliographies
The most remarkable new catalogues were John Windle’s gorgeous Omnium Gatherum (2011) and Pictorial Blake (2011), the latter in particular with an impressive number of single prints from Blake’s commercial book engravings.
Criticism, Biography, and Scholarship
The most prolific performer in 2011 has been Paul Miner, who published twenty essays in the year, mostly about allusions in Blake’s works. His first publication on Blake of which I have record was fifty-four years ago, in 1958, and between then and 2010 he published at least twenty-six more essays on Blake. This prodigious fecundity is the more remarkable because he has not had the leisure and resources of an academic, and his hometown of Ponca City, Oklahoma, is not known for its library riches.
One of the most remarkable Blake publications of 2011 was the special issue of the University of Toronto Quarterly (fall 2011), edited by Karen Mulhallen. This was phase five of the William Blake Project. The previous phases were (1) Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G. E. Bentley Jr, edited by Mulhallen (2010); (2) the symposium Blake in Our Time: A Symposium Celebrating the Future of Blake Studies and the Legacy of G. E. Bentley Jr (2010), orchestrated by Mulhallen; (3) the symposium exhibition (2010); and (4) the catalogue of it called Remember Me! Blake in Our Time: A Keepsake Book in Celebration of an Exhibition and Symposium on the Life and Art of William Blake (1757-1827) (2010). This is a very impressive panoply of scholarship and a wonderful credit to Mulhallen.
Biography
Some of the best and most durable work today is being done on Blake’s biographical context. An example of this is Dennis M. Read, R. H. Cromek, Engraver, Editor, and Entrepreneur (2011). The factual part of the book, derived largely from six of his previously published essays, provides a sympathetic and reliable portrait of Cromek as a traveling salesman. Read’s benevolent conclusions as to Cromek’s amiability and reliability are a good deal more generous than those of most students of Blake will be, even after they have read and admired the book.
Angus Whitehead, “‘I write in South Molton Street, what I both see and hear’: Reconstructing William and Catherine Blake’s Residence and Studio at 17 South Molton Street, Oxford Street,” British Art Journal (2010), is original, richly detailed, and valuable. His “‘humble but respectable’: Recovering the Neighbourhood Surrounding William and Catherine Blake’s Last Residence, No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand, c. 1820-27,” University of Toronto Quarterly (2011), has copious information about Blake’s neighbors, particularly about periods of residence in Fountain Court, professions, and ages, whilst his extraordinarily detailed essay “‘an excellent saleswoman’: The Last Years of Catherine Blake,” Blake (2011-12), provides crucial new evidence on where Catherine lived and when, and about Frederick Tatham and his young wife.
Mary Lynn Johnson, “‘Catalogue of Some of Blake’s Pictures at “The Salterns”’: Captain Butts as Exhibitor, Litigator, and Co-Heir (with His Sister Blanche),” University of Toronto Quarterly (2011), provides a great deal of information about the Blake heritage of the Butts family about 1850-1905.
Engravings
Minute portions of Blake’s career as an engraver are dealt with in several new works. Wayne C. Ripley, “‘In Great Forwardness’?: 1798 Advertisements for Volume Two of William Blake’s Night Thoughts,” Notes and Queries (2011), gives valuable new details about Blake’s most ambitious engraving commission. Mark Crosby, “Blake and the Banknote Crises of 1797, 1800, and 1818,” University of Toronto Quarterly (2011), is concerned with the context of Blake’s support of Alexander Tilloch’s effort to produce forgery-proof bank notes. G. E. Bentley, Jr., “Remember Me! Customs and Costumes of Blake’s Gift Book,” University of Toronto Quarterly (2011), deals with the variety of binding decorations in Remember Me! and suggests a reason for the modesty of its sales.
Bibliography
A considerable addition to the record in English of works on Blake in Japan is provided by the admirable and apparently exhaustive essay by Hikari Sato, “Meiji Taisho kino William Blake Shoshi Gakusha tachi—Yanagi Muneyoshi, Jugaku Bunsho, Sangu Makoto: William Blake Bibliographers in Japan in the 1910s and the 1920s—YANAGI Muneyoshi, JUGAKU Bunsho, and SANGU Makoto,” Choiki Bunka Kagaku Kiyo: Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies (2011).
Theology
Christopher Rowland, Blake and the Bible (2011), is a careful and learned account of Blake in a theological context.
Interpretation
Susanne M. Sklar, Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body (2011), argues that “Blake’s tantalizing words become comprehensible when they are heard” (147). The thesis is argued in a different context in her “‘In the Mouth of a True Orator’ (Jerusalem’s Operating Instructions),” University of Toronto Quarterly (2011).
* * * * * * * * *
The annual checklist of scholarship and discoveries concerning William Blake and his circle records publications and discoveries for the current year (say, 2011) and those for previous years which are not recorded in Blake Books, Blake Books Supplement, and “William Blake and His Circle.” Installments of “William Blake and His Circle” are continuations of Blake Books and Blake Books Supplement, with similar principles and conventions.
I have made no systematic attempt to record audio books and magazines, blogs, broadcasts on radio and television, calendars, CD-ROMs, chinaware, coffee mugs, comic books, computer printouts (unpublished), conferences, electronic editions of works by Blake,For example, William Blake: The Complete Works, which seems to include merely a biography (he was born at “28A Broad Street”) and 180 reproductions in color. e-mails, festivals and lecture series, furniture, jewelry, lectures on audiocassettes, lipstick, manuscripts, microforms, mosaics, movies, murals, music, notebooks (blank), novels merely tangentially about Blake,For instance, §Severin Rossetti, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Kindle edition, 2010). pageants, performances, pillows, playing cards, podcasts, poems about Blake,Such as §Eleanor Cooke, “Mr. Blake and the Baglady,” The Return (London: Salt, 2010). portraits, postcards, posters and pictures, recorded readings and singings, refrigerator magnets, stained-glass windows, stamps (postage and rubber), stickers, sweatshirts, T-shirts, tattoos, tiles, typescripts (unpublished), video recordings, and web sites.
I take Blake Books and Blake Books Supplement, faute de mieux, to be the standard bibliographical books on Blake,Except for the states of the prints for Blake’s commercial book engravings, where the standard authority is Robert N. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Significant further details, especially about collations, are given in Roger R. Easson and Essick, William Blake Book Illustrator: A Bibliography and Catalogue of the Commercial Engravings, vol. 1: Plates Designed and Engraved by Blake (Normal: American Blake Foundation, 1972); vol. 2: Plates Designed or Engraved by Blake 1774-1796 (Memphis: American Blake Foundation, 1979); vol. 3 never appeared. The standard authority for Blake prints issued separately is Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). and have noted significant differences from them.
The organization of Division I of the checklist is as in Blake Books. In Part VI: Criticism, Biography, and Scholarly Studies, collections of essays on Blake are listed under the names of the editors, and issues of periodicals devoted extensively to him are listed under the titles. Reviews, listed here under the book reviewed, are only for works which are chiefly about Blake, not for those with only, say, a chapter on Blake. Note that Blake Books and Blake Books Supplement normally do not include reviews.
Division II: Blake’s Circle is organized by individual (say, William Hayley or John Flaxman), with works by and about Blake’s friends and patrons, living individuals with whom he had significant direct and demonstrable contact. It does not include important contemporaries with whom Blake’s contact was negligible or nonexistent, such as John Constable and William Wordsworth and Edmund Burke. There is nothing in Blake Books and Blake Books Supplement corresponding to Division II.
Research for this checklist was carried out particularly in the libraries of the University of Toronto and Victoria University in the University of Toronto, as well as with the electronic resources of Copac, Google Books, Google Scholar, and WorldCat. Works published in Japan were found in CiNii (National Institute of Informatics Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator), the National Diet Library online catalogue, Komaba Library and the General Library of the University of Tokyo, and the National Diet Library. For publications in China, works were found in the National Library of China (Beijing) and the databases of Complete Texts for Periodicals in China, VIP Chinese Periodicals in Science and Technology, and Wan Fang Data (digitized periodicals). These Chinese online databases are very difficult of access.
I should be most grateful to anyone who can help me to better information about the unseen (§) items reported here, and I undertake to thank them prettily in person and in print.
I am grateful for many kinds of favors to Ashgate Publishing, Tanja Bakić (for works in Montenegrin and Croatian),Her volumes of poetry, *Bolesna ruža [The Sick Rose] (Podgorica: Nova knjiga, 2009) and Svilene cipelice [Silken Shoes] (Podgorica: Nova knjiga, 2011), are inspired by Blake. Sarah Bentley, Professor Robert Brandeis, Professor Robert N. Essick (especially for an early sight of his “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011”), Stephen Ferguson (Princeton curator of rare books), Harvard University Press, Sarah Jones (for extraordinarily meticulous copyediting), Professor Alan Kahan, John Koster, Shelley Langdale (curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for information about Songs [o] pls. 28, 52), Stephen Massil, Dr. Jeff Mertz, Paul Miner (for many offprints), Professor Morton Paley, Mary Silverstein, Tom Simpson (rare book cataloguer, E. J. Pratt Library, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, for bringing many publications about Blake to my attention), University of Iowa Press, Joseph Viscomi (especially for telling me of the newly recorded prints from Songs [o]), John Windle, Professor Duncan Wu, and Yale University Press.
Symbols
* | Works prefixed by an asterisk include one or more illustrations by Blake or depicting him. If there are more than 19 illustrations, the number is specified. If the illustrations include all those for a work by Blake, say Thel or his illustrations to L’ Allegro, the work is identified. |
§ | Works preceded by a section mark are reported on second-hand authority. |
Abbreviations
BB |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books (1977) |
BBS |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books Supplement (1995) |
Blake |
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly |
BR(2) |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records, 2nd ed. (2004) |
Butlin |
Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (1981) |
ISBN |
International Standard Book Number |
ProQuest |
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses largely replaces DAI for North American PhDs |
Division I: William Blake
Part I: Blake’s Writings
Section A: Original Editions, Facsimiles, Reprints, and Translations
Table of Stabholes
Addenda
Three Holes
4.4, 3.0 |
Poetical Sketches (Y) |
|
Descriptive Catalogue (F) (BB p. 138) |
Table of Collections
Addenda
Essick, Robert N. |
Type-Printed Work: Poetical Sketches (Y) |
Larkhall Fine Art |
Illuminated Work: For Children pl. 15 |
philadelphia museum of art |
Illuminated Work: Songs (o) pls. 28, 52 |
Table of Watermarks
Addenda
1802
Hayley, Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802)“1802” is also the watermark in the paper for Blake’s List of Apostles and his letter of 14 Oct. 1807.
* * * * * * * * *
America (1793)
A drawing (c. 1793)Butlin #226, acquired in 2011 by Robert N. Essick (see illus. 1 in his “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011,” Blake 45.4 [spring 2012]: 111-12). has sketches related to America pl. 2 (running woman [top right]), pl. 5 (man in chains [top middle], running woman [bottom left]), pl. 6 (arm with clenched fist), and pl. 8 (bent leg).
“Blake’s Chaucer: An Original Engraving” (1810)
Date:
It was in circulation by 20 June 1810 when the publisher Robert Bowyer sent to Earl Spencer “a prospectus” of an “Engraving in the line manner ... a very fine Etching” by Blake.BR(2) 300.
Copy D
History: It was sent 20 June 1810 by Robert Bowyer to Earl Spencer; untraced.
The Book of Thel (1789)
Copies D and G
They were reproduced in the William Blake Archive in 2011.
Editions
*
The Book of Thel, copy D.
William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2011.
*The Book of Thel, copy G. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2011.
For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793)
Newly Recorded Impression
Plate 15
Binding: Loose, inscribed “13” at the lower left, second state.
History: Offered privately by Larkhall Fine Art in Dec. 2011 to Robert N. Essick, the source of my information about it.
No other loose print from For Children is known, and no copy of For Children is missing a plate.
Letters
Newly Recorded
Blake repeatedly referred to money received or parcels sent (e.g., with proofs or books), and these were probably accompanied by letters, but they are not included here unless a letter is mentioned. All are untraced; dates in italics indicate that the letter is written to Blake.
1799 22? Aug. from Dr. John Trusler
Between 16 and 23 Aug. 1799, Dr. Trusler sent Blake “a Letter full of Criticisms” of Blake’s art which is quoted and paraphrased in Blake’s letters of 23 and 26 Aug.
1800 12 Sept. to William Hayley?
In his letter of 12 Sept. 1800, Blake asked Flaxman, “Be so kind as to Read & then Seal the Inclosed & Send it on its much beloved Mission.” Perhaps the intended recipient was Hayley.
1802 Jan. from Thomas Butts
In his letter to Butts of 10 Jan. 1802, Blake referred to and partly paraphrased “Your very kind & affectionate Letter.”
1802 Nov. from James Blake
Blake wrote on 22 Nov. 1802, “My Brother tells me ...,” presumably in a letter.
1802 22 Nov. to James Blake
In his letter to Butts of 22 Nov. 1802 Blake wrote, “I have taken the liberty to trouble you with a letter to my Brother which you will be so kind as to send or give him.”
1803 Jan. from James Blake
“Your Letter mentioning Mr Butts’s account of my Ague” is mentioned in Blake’s letter to his brother James of 30 Jan. 1803.
1803 late April from James Blake
In his letter to Butts of 25 April 1803, Blake referred to “a pressing Letter from my Brother.”
1803 late April from Thomas Butts
Blake referred in his letter to Butts of 25 April 1803 to “your kind & heartening Letter.”
1803 16 Aug. to James Blake
In his letter of 16 Aug. 1803, Blake asked Butts “to cause the Enclosd Letter to be deliverd to my Brother.”
1803 Dec. from William Hayley
“Your Letter has never arrived to me” (letter to Hayley, 13 Dec. 1803).
1804 Jan. to Samuel Rose
For “the Writing” on “your noble present to Mr Rose,” “I was fortunate in doing it myself & hit it off excellently” (letter to Hayley, 27 Jan. 1804).
1804 March from William Hayley
In his letter of 16 March 1804 Blake referred to “your kind Letter.”
1804 March to Prince Hoare
“I left it [your Elegant & Heart lifting Compliment] with a short note” to Hoare (Blake to Hayley, 16 March 1804).
1804 March from Prince Hoare
“I now send you his [Hoare’s] note to Me” (Blake to Hayley, 21 March 1804).
1804 March from William Hayley
“I did not recieve your Letter till Monday” (Blake to Hayley, 31 March 1804).
1804 2 April to Mr. Dally
“I write to him [Dally] by this post to inquire about it [the £15 he had sent about 19 March]” (Blake to Hayley, 2 April 1804).
1804 late May from William Hayley
Blake wrote to Hayley on 28 May 1804, “I thank you heartily for your kind offer of reading, &c.”
1804? from Joseph Johnson
“Mr. Johnson has, at times, written such letters to me as would have called for the sceptre of Agamemnon rather than the tongue of Ulysses” (Blake’s letter to Hayley of 28 May 1804). The dates of Johnson’s letters could be any time from 1779 to May 1804.
1804 21? Oct. from William Hayley
“I received your kind letter” and “I write immediately” (Blake to Hayley, 23 Oct. 1804).
1804 late Oct.? from William Hayley
Blake thanked Hayley in his letter of 4 Dec. 1804 for “your kind proposal in your Last Letter,” apparently about Hayley’s Edward I.
1805 June from Richard Phillips
Blake wrote in his letter to Hayley of 4 June 1805 that Phillips “sent to me the last sheet [of Hayley’s Ballads [1805]) ... desiring that I would forward it to Mr. Seagrave. But I have inclosed it to you.”
1807 May to R. H. Cromek
Cromek’s letter to Blake of May 1807 referred to “your letter” and paraphrased it.
1818 June from Dawson Turner
In his letter to Dawson Turner of 9 June 1818, Blake referred to “the different Works you have done me the honour to enquire after” with “very Polite approbation of my works.”
1827 16 Jan. from John Linnell
In his letter of 27 Jan. 1827, Blake apologized to Linnell for not having acknowledged the receipt of “your Letter” with the “Five Pounds from you on 16 Jany 1827.”
1827 5 March from George Cumberland
In his diary for 5 March 1827, Cumberland noted that he had “Sent ... Lett[er] to Blake,” and Blake paraphrased it in his letter of 15 March 1827.
1808 18 January (A)
History: Offered from the stock of Roy Davids at Bonhams (London), 29 March 2011 (see 2011 in Part IV).
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (?1790)
Table
Editions
*
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Edited with an introduction and commentary by Michael Phillips. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2011 [distributed in North America by University of Chicago Press]. 4
o, ix, 193 pp. and 52 color reproductions of copies B, K, and M and of pl. 14 in copies A, C-I and pls. 15, 14, 12-13 in copy G, plus 117 miscellaneous reproductions; ISBN: 9781851243419.
“Acknowledgements” (vii-viii), “Introduction” (1-47) and its notes (47-58), “Transcript” of text of copy B (59-86), color reproductions, “Commentary”It includes the loose pulls of pls. 3-4 (Fitzwilliam) but not those of pls. 5-6, 11 (2 prints), 14 (2), 16, 20 in BB et seq. (87-154), “Checklist of Copies” (155-63), and “Bibliography” (164-73), but no index.
This is a long-announced, detailed, and careful study of the Marriage. Much of it aims, often silently and rather ineffectively, to correct Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993). The detailed arguments about dates of composition, etching, and printing are not persuasive.
§*The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Ed. Jason Whittaker. Revised edition. N.p.: “Published by Rintrah Books,” 2011. Kindle edition. Zoamorphosis Essential Introductions.
I do not know the meaning of “revised edition” here. The work is apparently available only electronically.
“Pickering [Ballads] Manuscript” (?after 1807)
Paper: The Pickering Manuscript p. 16 has a printed catchword (“With”) from Hayley’s
Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802) p. 20 (E3
v) <
BB p. 341n2>.
Therefore the 22 pages of the Pickering Manuscript probably came from Designs ballad 1, pp. 5-10 (B2r-B4v) and ballad 2, pp. 11-26 (D1r-E4v).The paper in the Pickering Manuscript is uniform, but it is only an hypothesis that it all comes from Hayley’s Designs to a Series of Ballads and that the leaves are in the same order as in the Designs. The paper comes from the inner margins of conjugate unfolded sheets with the text cut away. The
Designs paper sometimes shows a watermark of “1802.”
Paper size: 12.5 x 18.4 cm. <
BB p. 342>. Since the leaves from Hayley’s
Designs are 23.5 x 29.4 cm., therefore 11 cm. were trimmed from each dimension of the
Designs leaves to make the Pickering Manuscript leaves. The outer margins were trimmed to remove irrelevant printed text, but why were 11 cm. cut off the tops or bottoms?
Binding: The leaves have stabholes in the inner margins 3.9 cm. from the top and 4.5, 4.6 cm. apart <
BB p. 342>. If they had been stabbed when they were part of
Designs to a Series of Ballads, one might expect to find two sets of stabholes, the first from when they were part of Hayley’s
Designs and the second from when they became part of the Pickering Manuscript. The absence of duplicate stabholes suggests that the
Designs leaves were loose when they were converted to the Pickering Manuscript.
Edition
The Pickering Manuscript.
William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2011.
Poetical Sketches (1783)
Collation:
8o in 4s (half-sheet imposition).Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011,” Blake 45.4 (spring 2012): 115n5, properly corrects BB p. 343: “4o (half sheet imposition).” The chain lines run vertically, as in an octavo in half sheets, not horizontally, as in a quarto in half sheets.
Copy K
History: Perhaps this is the copy sold in the Catalogue of the Valuable Library of the Late William Holgate (see 1846 in Part IV).It could also be copies E, L-M, O-Q, V-Y.
Newly Recorded Copy
Copy Y
For the binding, history, manuscript additions on the title page (by John Hawkins), and corrections to the text (by Blake), see
the entry on Poetical Sketches and illus. 4 and 5 in Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011,” Blake 45.4 (spring 2012): 115-19.
Facsimile Pages <see BB p. 345, Blake (2011)>
Note that the facsimile type of c. 1880 uses the archaic “ſ” for “s” and ligatures for “ct,” “fl,” “ſh,” “ſi,” “ſk,” “ſl,” “ſſ,” and “ſt,” as in the original.
Edition
Poetical Sketches. Decorations designed and cut on the wood by Charles Ricketts. 1899. <
BB #131>
§Sotheran’s “Private Press” catalogue (2011), lot 330, offers 1 of 8 copies printed on and bound in vellum.
Songs of Innocence (1789)
Copy B
Binding: The watermark on the front flyleaf is “BEILBY | & | KNOTTS | 1825”, a Birmingham firm, not “BEILK | & | KNOT | 1825” as in
BB p. 404, as I am told by Stephen Massil.
Copy E
History: The “C. Newman Born July 21st 1804,” as recorded on the leather label, is Charles Newman, son of Joseph and Ann Newman, who was born on 21 July and baptized at St. Martin-in-the-Fields on 12 Aug. 1804, and Charles R. Robson, who acquired
Innocence (E) “at Leicester in or about the year 1899” and sold it at Sotheby’s, 15 Dec. 1926, is probably Charles Raynor Robson (1869-1947), schoolmaster of Leicester and cricketer, as I am told by Stephen Massil.
Copy Q
History: Exhibited and reproduced in color in the Syracuse University exhibition and catalogue, 2003 (see
2003 in Part IV).
Edition
Songs of Innocence. Decorated by Charles Robinson and Mary H. Robinson. [1912]. <
BB #156> B. §Mineola: Dover Publications, 2011. vii, 66 pp.; ISBN: 9780486476049.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
Table
Copy |
Plates |
Leaves |
Watermark |
Blake nos. |
Leaf size in cm. |
Printing color |
o
Philadelphia
Museum of Art |
28, [a] 52 |
2 |
J WHA[TMAN] 18[ ] (pl. 28)
J W[HATMAN] (pl. 52) |
__ |
18.8 x 24.1 (pl. 28)
11.3 x 14.8 (pl. 52) |
black (pl. 28)
brownish-red (pl. 52) |
Copy E
It was reproduced in the William Blake Archive in 2011.
Newly Recorded Prints
Copy o pls. 28 (frontispiece to
Experience) and 52 (“To Tirzah”)
History: Pls. 28 and 52, with notes about the Charles Eliot Norton collection, were acquired by
Carl ZigrosserZigrosser was director of the Weyhe Gallery until 1940, when he became curator of prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Several of the prints in Songs (o) came from Weyhe. and given by him in 1975 to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.They were not in the catalogue when I inquired in 1962, 1977, and 1980. The museum identification codes for pls. 28, 52 are 1975-226-19 [and 18]. Their rediscovery was made by Joseph Viscomi, who told me of them. Most of my information comes from the generosity of Shelley Langdale of the museum.
The traced prints of Songs (o) in 2011 are pls. 13, 20-21, 24, 28, 36, 38-39, 46, 49, 52-53.
Editions
*
Canti dell’Innocenza e dell’Esperienza: Che mostrano i due contrari stati dell’anima umana. Trans. Roberto Rossi Testa. 1997, 2001. <
Blake 2007> C. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2009.
§*Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Trans. various. Introductions by Richard Holmes and Gregory Kruzhkov, commentary by Sasha Dugdale. [Moscow]: British Council and All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, 2011.
All the translations are by new young poets. The reproductions are in color. Apparently it was published in conjunction with the Pushkin Museum exhibition (see 2011 in Part IV).
*Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Ed. Richard Willmott. 1990. <BBS p. 136> B. §2011. viii, 200 pp.; ISBN: 9780198310785.
The 2011 edition is said to be “revised.”
*Songs of Innocence and of Experience, copy E. William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 2011.
“Upcott’s Autograph Album” (16 Jan. 1826)
History: Listed under “British Artists” in
Original Letters, Manuscripts, and State Papers. Collected by William Upcott, Islington (Privately Printed, 1836) 46.
Works LostOmitting drawings, prints without text by Blake, and copperplates and woodcuts.
Account (1800)
Blake wrote to Thomas Butts on 22 Sept. 1800, “My Sister will ... bring with her your account,” but no such account is known.
Account (1802)
On 22 Nov. 1802 Blake wrote to Butts, “I have inclosed the Account of Money recievd & work done,” but no such account is known.
Account book (1804)
Blake referred in his letter to William Hayley of 28 Dec. 1804 to “my account Book in which I have regularly written down Every Sum I have recievd from you,”Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993) 250, remarks: “Blake apparently kept no ledger detailing the cost of supplies.” but no such account book is now known.
Canterbury Pilgrims subscription (1806)
According to Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, “Pictor Ignotus” (1863) 1: 204, “a subscription paper for an engraving of the Canterbury Pilgrims had been circulated by Blake’s friends ... in 1806, two years before publication of The Grave [1808].” No other reference to this “subscription paper” is known. It must have been compiled either by Blake or from his information. The subscription paper cannot be “Blake’s Chaucer: The Canterbury Pilgrims” (“May 15th 1809”) or “Blake’s Chaucer: An Original Engraving” (n.d., watermark 1810),Copies of each belonged to Gilchrist’s son. which silently quote from the Descriptive Catalogue (1809). The date is important, for it seems to demonstrate that Blake’s plan to engrave the Canterbury Pilgrims decisively preceded that of his rival Stothard.
Ticket of admission to Blake’s exhibition of 1809-10
The only evidence for the existence of the ticket is in the postscript to Blake’s letter of May 1809 to Ozias Humphry: “I inclose a ticket of admission if you should honour my Exhibition with a Visit.”
Section B: Collections and Selections
Blake’s Works Reprinted in Conventional Typography before 1863
Addenda
(1844 [i.e., 1843])
“The Chimney Sweeper” (
Innocence) (see
“The Chimney Sweeper,” below).
1860
“Introduction to ‘Songs of Innocence,’” “The Lamb,” “The Divine Image,” “The Echoing Green,” “On Another’s Sorrow,”
Poetry for School and Home, from the Best Authors, ed. Thomas Shorter (London: T. J. Allman, 1860) 1-2, 26, 139, 170-71.
* * * * * * * * *
§*Alle Religionen sind Eins & Es gibt keine Naturbedingte Religion. Ed. with a commentary by Christian W. Bernhard. Vienna: Archetyp Verlag, 2011. 96 pp.; ISBN: 9783902746016. In German.
There are color reproductions, some of them enlarged, those of No Natural Religion from several copies and lacking pl. 1b, with German translations of All Religions are One and There is No Natural Religion.
“The Book of Blake.” Poet Prophets: Blake and Wordsworth: The Definitive Guide to the Two Greatest Visionaries of the Romantic Age. Ed. Joseph Vogel. Lincoln: iUniverse, 2006. xxxv, 556 pp.; ISBN: 9780595677030. 2-276.
§O casamento do céu e do inferno e outros escritos. Trans. Alberto Marsicano. Porto Alegre [Brazil]: L&PM, 2007. 136 pp. In Portuguese.
“The Chimney Sweeper” (Innocence). [Engraved title page:] THE CHILD’S GEM 1844. | T.H. CARTER & CO
[Typeset title page:] THE | CHILD’S GEM. | A HOLIDAY GIFT. | EDITED BY | MRS. S. COLMAN. | — | BOSTON: | T.H. CARTER AND COMPANY. | 118½ WASHINGTON STREET. | — | 1844 [copyright date 1843].The copy in Victoria University in the University of Toronto is inscribed “Mary | Christmas Tree. | 1843” and “Mary C. Green | by her | affec parents Decr 25 1843”. 85-88.
A pretty 16mo; an advertisement at the end gives the price as 38¢. Blake’s long lines are given as two lines each. On p. 88 is a vignette of a child playing a tambourine. Pamela Chandler Colman published other Blake poems in Boys’ and Girls’ Magazine (1843), Little Keepsake for 1844 (Boston, 1843), The Child’s Gem for 1845 (Boston, 1844), Boys’ and Girls’ Library (1844) <BBS pp. 147-48, 151-52, 157>—see Raymond H. Deck, Jr., “An American Original: Mrs. Colman’s Illustrated Printings of Blake’s Poems, 1843-44,” Blake 11.1 (summer 1977): 4-18.
§Divine Images: The Words of William Blake. Ed. and with an introduction by Jude Rawlins. [Thornhill, Ontario]: Hampstead House Press, 2005. 105 pp.
A selection from Blake’s poems with a chronology of his life.
[“Introduction” to Innocence], “The Tiger,” “The Blossom,” “The Angel.” Nightingale Valley: A Collection …. Ed. Giraldus [William Allingham]. 1860. <BB #264A>
For comments on Allingham’s version of “The Tyger,” see the entry in Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011,” Blake 45.4 (spring 2012): 127.
§“Kristalna odaja [The Crystal Cabinet].” Trans. Tanja Bakić. Vijesti [Montenegro] 24 Dec. 2011: 2. In Montenegrin.
§“Luda pjesma i druge pjesme [Mad Song and Other Poems].” Trans. Tanja Bakić. Ars [Montenegro] no. 4 (2010): 59-65. In Montenegrin.
§“Poezija [Poetry].” Trans. Tanja Bakić. Plima plus [Montenegro] nos. 53-54 (2006): 101-09. In Montenegrin.
§The Romantic Poets: William Blake. Foreword by Philip Pullman. Ed. Nicholas Wroe. [?London]: Guardian, [2010]. 26 pp. No. 7 in a series of 7. No ISBN.
Pullman, “Foreword” (5-7).
§“Sakupljeni rukopisi [The Pickering Manuscript].” Trans. Tanja Bakić. Ars [Montenegro] no. 3 (2011): 80-91. In Montenegrin.
*Songs of Innocence and of Experience 1794. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection Library of Congress Archive of the Making of a Portfolio of Eighteen Facsimile Impressions Flying Horse Editions, 2009. [London: “Designed and printed by Simon Rendall”], 2010. 4o, 36 pp., 3 copies printed.However, the gift inscription by Michael Phillips in the copy in Victoria University in the University of Toronto says that this copy is “out of series.”
Michael Phillips, “Introduction” (3-8), followed by “Checklist of Contents” [51 items] (9-15), in order “to record … the Flying Horse Editions facsimile” (2009) (31). It is about the title pages of Innocence and Experience (Songs pls. 3, 29), apparently designed to accompany “three discs [not included here] that provide a photographic record of the contents” (9).
“To the Muses” (called “The Poet Complains to the Muses of the Decline of Poetry”). Cameos from the Antique. Ed. Mrs. [Rose] Lawrence. 1849. <Blake (2010), under Reprints of Blake’s Works before 1863>
Blake is named only in the contents. In l. 10, “Beneath the bosom of the sea,” Lawrence gives “bottom” for Blake’s “bosom,” a variant I have not noticed elsewhere. The poem is not in Malkin; it seems to have been first printed in conventional typography by H. C. Robinson (1811) (BR[2] 585). There were earlier editions of Cameos in 1831, 1833, and 1834, but I do not know whether they include “To the Muses.”
William Blake Archive <http://www.blakearchive.org>
In 2011 the archive added 33 watercolor illustrations to the Bible, preliminary drawings and illustrations for Thornton’s edition of Virgil’s Pastorals, The Book of Thel (D, G), Songs (E), and the “Pickering Manuscript,” and republished with extra features 9 series of Blake’s Milton watercolors.
§William Blake: Écrits prophétiques des dernières années suivis de lettres. Trans. Pierre Leyris. 2000. <Blake (2009)§> B. 2nd ed. 2000. Domaine Romantique. ISBN: 9782714307095.
Part II: Reproductions of Drawings and Paintings
Section A: Illustrations of Individual Authors
Bible
In 2011, 33 illustrations to the Bible on New Testament subjects were reproduced in the William Blake Archive.
Blair, Robert, The Grave (1808)
Edition
*
William Blake’s Watercolour Inventions in Illustration of The Grave
by Robert Blair. Ed. Martin Butlin. 2009. <
Blake (2010)>
Review
*Kelly Grovier, “Gambols in the Graveyard: William Blake’s ‘Watercolour Inventions,’”
Times Literary Supplement 17 June 2011: 14-15 (“this lavish edition ought to reignite questions about the proprietary nature of cultural treasures and whether private interest should always be permitted to trump the public good”).
Virgil, Pastorals (1821)
In 2011, a selection of Blake’s preliminary drawings was reproduced in the William Blake Archive.
Young, Edward, Night Thoughts (1797)
Edition
*
William Blake’s Designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: A Complete Edition. Ed. with commentary by John E. Grant et al. 1980. <
BBS p. 177>
Review
Morton D. Paley,
Studies in Romanticism 21.4 (winter 1982): 674-82.
Part III: Commercial EngravingsFrom 2010 I record pre-1863 references to separately issued prints by Blake.
Section A: Illustrations of Individual Authors
Allen, Charles, A New and Improved History of England (1797)
New Location: National Library of Ireland.
Allen, Charles, A New and Improved Roman History (1798)
New Location: Liverpool.
Bellamy’s Picturesque Magazine (1793)
Edition
Bellamy’s Picturesque Magazine. Gale Ecco Print Editions, 2010. 90 pp.; ISBN: 9781170817551. A digitized version.
Bible
Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826, 1874)
For an illustration and description of John Linnell’s draft of the label for Job, now in the Essick collection, see illus. 6 in Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011,” Blake 45.4 (spring 2012): 120-21. For the printed version, much altered, see BB p. 519.
All 22 prints are reproduced in John Windle, Pictorial Blake (see 2011 in Part IV).
Diamond Bible (1832-34, 1836-37, 1840) (see <Blake (2010)>)
B. Engraved title page: The lettering is the same as in the first version, but the date is altered from 1833 to 1834.
Typeset title page: Like the 1834 typeset title page except for the imprint:
LONDON: | ALLAN BELL & CO. AND SHEPHERD & SUTTON; | AND FRASER & CO. EDINBURGH. | MDCCCXXXVI [1836].
1834-36 Location: Victoria University in the University of Toronto (with additional title pages for the
Diamond New Testament [engraved, n.d.; typeset, 1836],
Diamond Book of Psalms [London: Allan Bell & Co, and Simpkin & Marshall, 1834], and
The Psalms of David [engraved, 1836; typeset, 1834]).
Blair, Robert, The Grave (1808, 1813 …)
1808 New Locations: Brooklyn Museum, Wake Forest (gray stiff paper wrappers).
1813: All 13 prints are reproduced in John Windle,
Pictorial Blake (see
2011 in Part IV).
Reviews, notices
Monthly Literary Advertiser 10 Sept. 1807: 7.My references to Monthly Literary Advertiser and Bent’s Monthly Literary Advertiser come from Newspaper Archive, which is so heavily corrupted as to be illegible.
Bent’s Monthly Literary Advertiser 10 July 1844: 9 (price reduced from 12s. 6d. to 11s.).
Bent’s Monthly Literary Advertiser 11 Dec. 1844: 13.
Bonnycastle, John, An Introduction to Mensuration (1782, 1787, 1791, 1794)
1794 New Location: Colorado.
The Cabinet of the Arts (1799) (addenda to <Blake (2006, 2007)>)
Location: Princeton copy 1 [GAX 2006-3128N] with 112 prints (as in
Blake [2007]);
copy 2 [Ex item 5987716] with 134 prints.It was offered in Alex Fotheringham, catalogue 78 (March 2011), lot 76 (£650). Copy 2 does not have the “F: Revolution” plate, so it is present in only three of the eight known copies.
Size: Princeton copy 2 is 23 cm. high.
Paper: Princeton copies 1-2 are on laid and (mostly) wove paper, the latter with fragments of WHATMAN watermark.
Sources of the Prints: [Robert Riddell’s faux old Scottish ballad]
The Bedesman on Nidsyde (S. Hooper, 1790),
Lady’s Pocket Magazine 4 (Harrison & Co., 1 Aug. 1795); to the booksellers who originally published the prints add S. Hooper.
Cumberland, George, Thoughts on Outline (1796)
New Locations: Barr Smith Library (Adelaide, Australia), British Library (2—
BB records 1), McGill, Monash, Wales (Lampeter), Westminster Libraries.
Fenning, D., and J. Collyer, A New System of Geography (1785-86, 1787)
1785-86 New Locations: Robert N. Essick, Tasmania (Morris Miller Library).
1787 New Location: Hennepin County Library (Minnetonka, Minnesota).
Pl. 1: The date of “
June 6.th 1784” in the British Library copy of 1785-86 was altered in the Essick and Tasmania copies of 1785-86 to “July 16.
th 1785”.
Pl. 2: The imprint date of “
April 16.th 1787” (as in the 1787 edition) is found in the Essick copy of 1785-86.
The British Library copy (1785-86) is reproduced in Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Flaxman, John, Compositions from … Hesiod (1817, 1870)
For the designs “in Dec. 1970 in the possession of the dealer H. D. Lyon” <BB p. 556>, substitute “were sold by Maggs in 2011 to an unidentified collection,” according to Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011,” Blake 45.4 (spring 2012): 130.
Flaxman, John, The Iliad of Homer (1805)
“The price I receive for engraving Flaxman’s [3] outlines of Homer [The Iliad (1805)] is five guineas each,” according to Blake’s letter of 4 May 1804.
Gay, John, Fables (1793)
New Location: Syracuse.
Hartley, David, Observations on Man (1791)
According to Herman Andrew Pistorius, Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man … Translated from the German Original … MDCCLXXII [1772], 3rd ed. (London: J. Johnson, 1801) <Bodleian>, “*** A Print of the author, engraved by Blake, in quarto, may be had of the publisher, price two shillings and six-pence” (iii).
Hayley, William, Ballads (1805)
Blake wrote to Hayley on 22 Jan. 1805 that, according to Phillips, the publisher of the Ballads, “one thousand copies should be the first edition.” For each of the five “highly finishd” plates, Blake said he was to have £21, according to his letter of 25 March 1805.
Hayley, William, Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802)
Drawings
The sketches on the verso of The Resurrection of the Dead, c. 1780-85 (Butlin #79 [verso not recorded]), Essick collection (2011), include the head of an eagle for ballad 2, “The Eagle,” and the man’s leg for ballad 4, “The Dog.”
Designs Paper Used for Scrap
For “Pp. 19-20 &c. used for ‘The Ballads [Pickering] MS’ (Morgan)” <BB p. 574>, read “Pp. 5-26 (B2r-E4v) used for ‘The Pickering [Ballads] MS’ (Morgan)” (see “Pickering [Ballads] Manuscript” in Part IA).
Hayley’s Designs to a Series of Ballads were from the first a commercial undertaking. Hayley said that they were intended “for the Emolument of Mr Blake the artist,”Hayley’s autobiography, quoted in BR(2) 123. and he actively engaged his friends to become ballad mongers. The work was published at Blake’s expense and for his benefit.
Debits and Credits
The chief cash costs were for (1) copperplates for the 6 large and 8 small engravings, (2) paper for text (watermarked “1802”) including separate printed blue covers and large prints, and (3) paper and printing the 10¼ sheets of text and the covers by Joseph Seagrave in Chichester (the Blakes printed the engravings in Felpham). There was no cost for advertising (except in review copies), and no payment to the author, the designer, the engraver, and the plate printers, except in possible profit from sales. There was no profit.
The 14 copperplates must have weighed 2,464.6 g (5½ pounds) and cost £3.13.1½.G. E. Bentley, Jr., “Blake’s Heavy Metal: The History, Weight, Uses, Cost, and Makers of His Copper Plates,” University of Toronto Quarterly 76.2 (spring 2007): 740. The text consisted of 37 quarto leaves, with prints on pp. iv, 1, 9, 11, 26, 27, 39, 41:
Title page |
1 leaf |
=2½ sheets |
Preface (pp. i-iv) |
2 leaves |
Ballad 1: The Elephant (pp. 1-10) |
5 leaves |
Blue paper covers |
2 leaves |
|
|
|
Ballad 2: The Eagle (pp. 11-26) |
8 leaves |
=2½ sheets |
Blue paper covers |
2 leaves |
|
|
|
Ballad 3: The Lion (pp. 27-40) |
7 leaves |
=2¼ sheets |
Blue paper covers |
2 leaves |
|
|
|
Ballad 4: The Dog (pp. 41-52) |
6 leaves |
=2 sheets |
Blue paper covers |
2 leaves |
Total |
|
9¼ sheets |
In addition, there are 6 leaves (1½ quarto sheets) with full-page prints for preliminaries (1 print) and ballad 1 (1), ballad 2 (1), ballad 3 (1), and ballad 4 (2). Each complete set of the Designs, all four parts, used 43 leaves, 10¾ quarto sheets.
The text must have been printed by Seagrave in four print runs, one in late May 1802 for the preliminaries and ballad 1, one in late June for ballad 2, one in late July for ballad 3, and one in early September for ballad 4. The engravings, however, were only printed as they were called for.
For paper for the full-page prints in the Designs, “Blake has ... [arranged] for his Ballads to deal with his own stationer in London, & send it down as He thought proper,” according to Hayley’s letter of 6 July 1802.
We do not know how many copies of the Designs were printed or what Seagrave’s charges were for printing and paper, but we may make educated estimates based on Blake’s statement in his letter of 28 Dec. 1804 that he paid Seagrave “30 Pounds ... in part of his Account”Hayley wrote on 3 Apr. 1803 that Blake “has paid a Bill of 30£ for paper” [and printing] for the Designs. and on contemporary printing prices. On 10 Oct. 1800 Thomas Bensley estimated that the cost of paper, printing, and hot-pressing 1,000 quarto copies of Thomson’s Seasons (5 sheets each) for F. J. Du Roveray would be £15.15.0 per sheet (£78.15 in all).Quoted from the manuscript in the Huntington Library; see G. E. Bentley, Jr., “F. J. Du Roveray, Illustrated-Book Publisher 1798-1806: The Amateur and the Trade,” Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin 12 (1988): 70. Perhaps Blake’s provincial printer Seagrave charged him £15 for paper and printing per thousand quarto sheets.
It is a mere informed guess that the print run for ballad 1 was 250 copies and that this was continued for ballad 2 when the sales for ballad 1 at first seemed promising. When the sales for ballad 2 proved disastrous, Blake must have reduced his print order, perhaps to 150 copies, for ballads 3-4. The expenses of printing and paper might have been as follows:
Cost of 250 copies of ballads 1-2 |
|
Printing 1250 sheets (250 x 5 sheets) at £15 per 1,000 sheets [a] |
£18.15.0 |
187.5 sheets for 250 copies of 3 full-page quarto prints (quarter sheets) at £5 per ream of 500 sheets |
£1.17.3 |
Total |
£20. 2.3 |
|
|
Cost of 150 copies of ballads 3-4 |
|
Printing 637.5 sheets (150 x 4¼ sheets) at £15 per 1,000 sheets |
£9.11.3 |
112.5 sheets for 150 copies of 3 full-page quarto prints (quarter sheets) at £5 per ream of 500 sheets |
£1. 2.6 |
Total |
£10.13.9 |
Total
| £30.16.0 |
Presumably Seagrave printed copies of each ballad in Chichester and sent them to Blake in Felpham; Blake and his wife then printed engravings on text plates plus the full-page plates as the need arose, not all at once. Hayley wrote to Lady Hesketh on 10 June 1802, “He & his excellent Wife (a true Helpmate!) pass the plates thro’ a rolling press in their own cottage together; & of course it is a work of some Time to collect a Number of Impressions.”Hayley repeats this in his letter to R. H. Evans on 3 April 1803: “He and his good industrious Wife together take all the Impressions from the various Engravings in their own domestic Press.”
When there proved to be demand for only a few score copies, Blake was left with many copies of the printed text which were of no commercial value. He cannily kept these printed sheets, even taking them back to London with him in 1803, at considerable trouble, and he made drawings on them for the rest of his life, including designs for Blair’s Grave (1805), Malkin’s Memoirs (1806), Job and Dante (c. 1824).BB pp. 574-75 and BBS pp. 221-22 record 47 leaves from the Designs used as scrap paper (see also the “Pickering Manuscript” in Part IA), but none for finished engravings. (The “Riddle Manuscript” is on the verso of a proof-before-letters from the Designs.) There are 9 leaves used as scrap from part 1, 24 from part 2, 8 from part 3, and 6 from part 4, which might suggest that part 2 provided most unvendible copies. A disproportionate number of scraps are on leaves which would have had prints on them: pp. 9 (5), 11 (1), 26 (6), 27 (1), 41 (2). No print from the Designs is known to have been reused.
Sales
The first reports of sales were encouraging. On 29 June 1802 Hayley wrote that ballad 1 was “marching triumphantly on the road of prosperity,” and as late as 30 Jan. 1803 Blake wrote to his brother: “These Ballads are likely to be Profitable for we have Sold all that we have had time to print. Evans the Bookseller in Pallmall says they go off very well.”
However, Hayley told R. H. Evans on 3 April 1803: “He has paid a Bill of 30£ for paper & the copies He has disposed of in the country have not produced more than half that sum£15 would have paid for 120 individual ballads at 2s. 6d. each. However, we know that Lady Hesketh paid £5.5.0 for 10 copies and Flaxman £1.17.6 for 4, leaving only £7.17.6 (£15 - £7.2.6) or 63 copies. to reimburse Him.” The £30 for Seagrave was apparently partly advanced by Hayley, for on 28 Dec. 1804 Blake thanked him for “the Twelve Guineas which you Lent Me when I made up 30 Pounds to pay our Worthy Seagrave in part of his Account.” Blake wrote on 26 Oct. 1803, “Mr. Evans ... gives small hopes of our ballads; he says he has sold but fifteen numbers at the most, and that going on would be a certain loss of almost all the expenses,” and on 22 Jan. 1805 he wrote that the London bookseller Phillips advised that “we must consider all that has been printed as lost, and begin anew.”
The Designs to a Series of Ballads were printed by J. Seagrave in Chichester and sold by him and P. Humphry and R. H. Evans in London “for W. BLAKE, Felpham.” We do not know how many copies Seagrave sold—perhaps he only provided the copy for the reviewer in the Sussex Chronicle & Chichester Advertiser (2 June 1802), which he printed—but we have good information about how many were sold by Evans in London (15, worth £1.17.6)The sales by Evans included ballads 1-3 for Anna Seward and 3-4 for Lady Hesketh and some of her friends; Evans would have deducted his commission. We have no information about sales by Humphry. and how many were disposed of by friends of Blake and Hayley (120, worth £15),We can account for sales of 62 copies of ballad 1, 19 of ballad 2, 10 of ballad 3, and 12 of ballad 4 = 103 in all. Only 53 numbers have been traced today. mostly in the country.
The Known Distribution of the Designs
#1 |
Anon., reviewer for the Sussex Chronicle & Chichester Advertiser (2 June 1802): 172. |
#1 |
Charlotte Collins, 9 copies (2 of which were to replace damaged copies), 1 of which went to Mr. Spilsbury (28 June 1802). |
#1 |
John Flaxman’s 5 copies went to Mr. [John] Hawkins (2), Mr. [William] Long, Mr. [Samuel] Rogers; Flaxman paid “for the whole of my copy” [i.e., £1.17.6 for 15 numbers at 2s. 6d. each] (27 June 1802). |
#1 |
Samuel Greatheed received 6, but sold none (Mr. Courteney was sent a copy but it was “returned unpurchased”) (1 Sept. 1802); he referred to them in his review of Hayley’s Ballads in the Eclectic Review (1 Dec. 1805). |
#1 |
Harriet, Lady Hesketh, was sent “a Bundle of Ballads” from Hayley, which she disposed of to 3 Bath libraries, Lord [William] and Lady [Mary] Harcourt, Richard Hurd, Dr. Randolph (2 copies, 1 to show to Lord Spencer), and “my Sistr [Theodora],” and she kept one; she paid £5.5.0 for them all (BR[2] 129, 132, 135-36, 146), though by her own figures she only owed £1.5.0; Lady Hesketh received from Blake “two packets of ballads” [5 in each] (15 Oct. 1802). |
#1 |
Johnny Johnson was sent 20 copies and disposed of “several” (6 June, 7 July 1802). |
#1 |
E. G. Marsh (“I … hope to contribute my little assistance to the payment” (20 June 1802). |
#1 |
Mrs. Throckmorton of Bath was sent it by Conder, bookseller of Bucklesbury, but we don’t know if she bought it (3 Sept. 1802). |
#1-2 |
Anon., reviewer for the European Magazine (Aug. 1802): 125-26. |
#1-2 |
Isaac Reed (BR[2] 856n84), perhaps from Nancy Flaxman, who gave him Poetical Sketches (F) in 1784. |
#1-3 |
Anon., reviewer for the Poetical Register (1803): 410 (BR[2] 143fn). |
#1-3 |
Offered in R. H. Evans’s catalogue (1804), lot 1001, no price (BR[2] 143fn). |
#1-3 |
William Hayley (BR[2] 153). |
#1-3 |
Anna Seward, from the booksellers (3 March 1803). |
#1-4 |
Thomas Butts, for Mr. [John] Birch. In his letter to Butts of 25 April 1803, Blake says “I now send the 4 Numbers for Mr Birch,” and in the 1806 account with Butts is also a record of 3 numbers to Mr. Birch (7s. 6d.). Blake also sent “some Ballads” with his letter of 22 Nov. 1802, perhaps the “4 Nos of Hayleys Ballads” in his receipt of 3 March 1806 (BR[2] 764). |
#1-4 |
R. H. Evans, the book’s London publisher, sold 15 numbers “at the most” (Blake’s letter of 26 Oct. 1803). [a] |
#1-4 |
William Hayley (BR[2] 153). |
#1-4 |
“James Parker,” copy in the Library of Congress. |
#1-4? |
Charlotte Smith’s daughter, from Hayley. [b] |
#2 |
Lady Hesketh received 5 (#3-4 were to come from her Bath bookseller), “as well as those I take in for my Sistr [Theodora] and some other friends,” sent Blake £5.5.0 (28 June, 15 Oct. 1802). |
#2 |
Charlotte Collins was ready to take 7 (28 June 1802). |
#3 |
Samuel Greatheed expected to receive copies (3 Sept. 1802). |
#3 |
Johnny Johnson, some to be sent by Hayley (6 Aug. 1802). |
#4 |
Mrs. Flaxman, 5 copies sent via James Blake (Blake’s letter of 30 Jan. 1803). |
#4 |
James Blake, 5 copies, 2 of them for Mrs. [Penelope Carleton] Chetwynd (Blake’s letter of 30 Jan. 1803) and apparently 3 to Butts (“3 Hayleys Ballads + Brother,” account with Butts of 3 March 1806). |
Various |
Friends took 22 copies. [c] |
Blake’s probable expenses for the Designs were therefore for paper and printing (£30.16.0), copper (£3.13.1½), and advertising (15s. for 6 review copies), or £35.4.1½ in all, and his probable receipts (£16.7.6) left him considerably out of pocket. Hayley’s generous gesture had been a disaster for Blake, not only in losing money but also in wasting his creative genius.
Hayley, William, An Essay on Sculpture (1800)
Advertisement
An announcement of its publication appeared in the Morning Post for 1 May 1800.See Mark Crosby, “Blake and the Banknote Crises of 1797, 1800, and 1818,” University of Toronto Quarterly 80.4 (2011): 829.
Hayley, William, The Life of George Romney (1809)
Blake asked £31.10.0 for “finishd” quarto plates and £15.15.0 for the “less finishd,” according to his letter of 22 June 1804. He engraved two finished plates, but one was not used.
He referred to his engraving of the self-portrait of Romney in many letters (see BB p. 577), but it was not published, and no copy has previously been reported. However, a proof-before-letters of a quarto engraving of Romney was offered by §Grosvenor Prints (London) in April 2011; Robert N. Essick thinks it might be the one by Blake, and Mark Crosby will publish an article about it in Blake.
Hayley, William, The Triumphs of Temper (1803)
“I am to have 10 Guineas each” for “a little work of Mr H’s,” Hayley’s Triumphs of Temper, according to Blake’s letter of 30 Jan. 1803.
Lavater, John Caspar, Aphorisms on Man (1788, 1789, 1794)
The fourth edition (Boston: I. Thomas & E. T. Andrews, D. West, E. Larkin jun.; Worcester: I. Thomas, 1790) <Victoria University in the University of Toronto> has an anon. frontispiece which copies Blake’s frontispiece fairly carefully, not reversed.
Lavater, John Caspar, Essays on Physiognomy (1789-98, 1792, 1810)
The cover for part 5 (Essick collection), dated 1788, includes Blake’s first print: “7. aged figures, gardening.”
Monthly Magazine (1797)
Blake’s engraving of “The late M.r Wright of Derby” is probably “the Head I sent you as a Specimen” for which “I had Twelve” guineas, according to his letter to John Trusler on 23 Aug. 1799.
Mora, Jose Joaquin de, Meditaciones Poeticas (1826)
Sales
“R. ACKERMANN,
book and printseller, and superfine water-colour manufacturer to HIS MAJESTY
[1827]:It says that Ackermann has just moved from 101 Strand to 96 Beaufort Buildings [1827], and this copy (with the stamp of Bibliothèque de la Ville de Lyon) is bound with Edinburgh Review no. 91 (June 1827). MEDITACIONES POETICAS, por J. J.
de M
ora, con estampas. 1
l. 11
s. 6
d. half-bound.”
“Literary Advertising List”
[1828]It is bound with Foreign Review no. 1 (Jan. 1828). <Taylorian>, described as in Ackermann’s 1827 list.
A Catalogue of Spanish and Portuguese Books, on Sale by Vincent Salvá [y Pérez], 124 Regent Street, London. Part 2. MDCCCXXIX [1829], lot 3510, £1.11.6.
Remember Me! (1824, 1825) (see <Blake (2011)>)
1824 New Location: Northwestern.
The Northwestern copy, not recorded in Bentley, “Remember Me! Customs and Costumes of Blake’s Gift Book” (see University of Toronto Quarterly in Part VI), is in “publisher’s printed boards with old rebacking in red muslin, custom clamshell box” (according to §Bonhams auction, San Francisco, 2011, lot 2048).
Salzmann, C. G., Elements of Morality (1791, 1792, 1793, 1799, 1805, ?1815)
To the entry in Blake (2011) reporting Robert N. Essick’s suggestion about the involvement of Blake’s apprentice, Thomas Owen, I would add that the alterations in 1792 and 1793 (described in Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991] 50-51), which are more like Blake’s usual style of engraving, may be by the master correcting the work of his apprentice.
Some of the 1791 designs are competently engraved, reversed, by H. Weston in
ELEMENTS | OF | MORALITY, | FOR THE | USE OF CHILDREN; | WITH AN | INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO PARENTS. | = | Translated from the German of the | Rev. C.G. SALZMANN. | = | ILLUSTRATED WITH TWENTY COPPER-PLATES, | IN TWO VOLUMES | — | VOL. I.The only copy I have seen, in Victoria University in the University of Toronto, consists of vol. 1 only. In it pls. 3-4, 6-10 (at pp. 48, 72, 182, 188, 218, 226, 234) copy 1791 pls. 2, 6, 16, 18, 20, 22-23, including the inscriptions. | = | PHILADELPHIA: | Printed by J. HOFF & H. KAMMERER, jun. | M,DCC,XCVI [1796].BB p. 608 says of the edition of Philadelphia, 1796, “the plates are different.” Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations 51, says: “The 1796 Philadelphia edition contains twenty of the designs re-engraved by another hand.”
Salzmann, C. G., Gymnastics for Youth (1800)
New Locations: Amherst College, Birmingham, California (Los Angeles), Cambridge, Indiana, Kansas, Leicester, McGill, Morgan Library, Oberlin College, Paxton House (near Berwick-upon-Tweed), Pennsylvania, Providence Public Library, Toronto Public Library, Washington (St. Louis), Wellcome Institute, West Sussex Record Office.
Seally, John, and Israel Lyons, A Complete Geographical Dictionary (?1784)
?1784 New Location: Robert N. Essick (vol. 2 only, with all the Blake plates).
Stedman, John Gabriel, Narrative, of a Five Years’ Expedition … (1796, 1806, 1813)
1796 New Locations: Huntington
(one of the two copies is colored),The colored Huntington copy is reproduced in the William Blake Archive. Victoria University in the University of Toronto (very professionally colored).
Vetusta Monumenta, vol. 2 (?1789)
New Locations: Robert N. Essick, Society of Antiquaries.
Virgil, Pastorals (1821)
Larkhall Fine Art offered Robert N. Essick “21 impressions of BB #504.8 (Blake’s 4th wood engraving) [and] 14 impressions of BB #504.13 (Blake’s 9th wood engraving)” with an envelope with a pencil inscription by John Linnell, Jr.: “Pastorals | 5 impressions—of the blocks | as samples for average strength [printing pressure?] | J. Linnell.”Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2011,” Blake 45.4 (spring 2012): 125.
In 2011, Blake’s illustrations (from a copy at the Huntington) were reproduced in the William Blake Archive.
Wit’s Magazine (1784)
New Location: Bodleian (3—
BB records 1).
Wollstonecraft, Mary, Original Stories from Real Life (1791, 1796)
1791 New Locations: British Library (2—
BB records 1), California (Berkeley), Melbourne, Trinity College (Cambridge) (2), Turnbull Library.
1796 New Locations: Amsterdam, Arkansas, Boston Public, Bryn Mawr, California (Irvine), Michigan State, Morgan Library, Swarthmore College, Turnbull Library, Wisconsin (Madison).
Young, Edward, Night Thoughts (1797)
New Locations: Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem (Sydney, Australia), Brigham Young, Brown, Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, Elmira College, Eton College, Frick Collection, Hennepin County Library (Minnetonka, Minnesota), Leeds, National Art Library (London), National Library of Wales, New York University, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, University of the Arts (Philadelphia), Wesleyan (Middletown, Connecticut), Westmont College (Santa Barbara, California).
R. Noble, the printer of Night Thoughts, was a jobbing printer—or perhaps two printers—whose residence was given as 4 Great Shire Lane, Temple Bar, in 1790, 1794-1800, and who registered press(es) at Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, in 1799 and 1800.According to William B. Todd, A Directory of Printers and Others in Allied Trades, London and Vicinity 1800-1840 (London: Printing Historical Society, 1972), Richard Noble, printer, of 4 Great Shire Lane, Temple Bar, registered his press under the new law on 30 Aug. 1799 with Joseph Burt and again by himself on 17 Jan. 1800. Robert Noble, printer, resident at 4 Great Shire Lane, registered his press with Joseph Burt at Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, on 16 Jan. 1800. William Calvert, printer, of 4 Great Shire Lane, registered a press with James Calvert on 1 July 1801 and operated it in 1801-23. R. Noble was not apprenticed in the Stationers’ Company, according to Stationers’ Company Apprentices 1701-1800, ed. D. F. McKenzie (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1978). I have traced his imprint on 55 editions printed in 1790-1804, mostly (36) in 1800-01; there were only 3 in 1796-98, and only one of the Noble editions was a folio, Young’s Night Thoughts. R. Noble was far from the achievement—and probably from the expense—of the great rivals of Richard Edwards, Thomas Bensley with Macklin’s great folio Bible (1800), and William Bulmer with the Boydells’ great folio Shakespeare (1791-1805) and Milton (1793-97).
Costs of Young’s Night Thoughts
537 watercolors and copyright therefor |
£21. 0. 0 |
Paper for watercolors |
£5. 0. 0 |
Paper and printing text of 250 copies [a] |
£96.18. 0 |
43 engravings paid for with 30 copies of the printed text |
£31.10. 0 |
Printing 250 copies each of 43 engravings [b] at 6s. per 100 [c] |
£32. 5. 0 |
Binding at 2s. 2d. each [d] |
£27. 1. 8 |
Advertising [e] |
£1. 5. 0 |
Total
| £214.19. 8 |
It would be agreeable to think that the Blakes were paid for printing the engravings.
Payments
The heaviest investor in the work was William Blake. He had asked £105 for his watercolors; instead he received £21 (9d. per design)Joseph Farington’s diary, 24 June 1796 (BR[2] 71). Blake’s friend J. T. Smith called it a “despicably low ... price” (Nollekens and His Times [1828]; see BR[2] 610). plus a ream of paper (£5.0.0). We do not know how much or even whether he was paid for his 43 folio engravings. At the very least he should have expected £5.5.0 each for these very large plates (c. 33 x 41 cm.), the sum he received for his smaller outline plates (c. 35 x 25 cm.) for Flaxman’s Iliad (1805) and Hesiod (1817),BB pp. 561-62, 557-58. For his 12 highly finished, slightly smaller plates for Blair’s Grave, Schiavonetti was paid perhaps £540 (BR[2] 246); he asked £63 for “The Day of Judgment” (BR[2] 245). a total of £225.15.0.
It is possible that Blake was paid for his engravings not in cash but in copies of the book, valued at £5.5.0 for all four parts or £2.2.0 for part 1 (£1.1.0 deposit and £1.1.0 on delivery).Prospectus, BR(2) 78-79. Colored copies are not mentioned in contemporary advertisements and reviews. Blake could then color and sell them for his own profit. Perhaps he was given about 30 copies, worth £31. Twenty-eight colored copies have been traced.Copies A-T are recorded in BB pp. 642-46, 956-57, copies U-Z in BBS pp. 272-73, and copies AA-BB in Blake (2000, 2002). Some have contemporary inscriptions associating them with Blake: copy Q is annotated “This Copy was coloured for me by Mr Blake | W. E.”; copy R has “This copy colrd by W. Blake”; copy C is signed “W. Blake”; and copies C and W have notes that they were to serve “as pattern” for coloring, presumably by Mrs. Blake. A surprising number can be traced to contemporary owners, most of whom owned other works by Blake: [Rebekah] Bliss (d. 1819) (D), Thomas Butts (1757-1845) (A), Baron Dimsdale (1712-1800) (X), “W. E.” (for William Esdaile [1758-1837] or William Ensom [1796-1832]) (Q), ?Richard Edwards (1768-1827) (B), Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855) (G), John S. Harford, Jr. (1785-1866) (R), John Soane (1753-1837) (F), and Earl Spencer (1758-1834) (O).
The Night Thoughts were colored in two styles, one about 1797 (C-D, I-J, Q-R, U), and the other about 1805 (B, H, L, P). Presumably this means that Blake carried copies with him when he moved from London to Felpham in 1800 and then back again when he returned to London in 1803.
How much was he paid for these colored copies? We have no direct evidence, but we can find a comfortable analogy in the prices of colored copies of works in illuminated printing of the same size. Blake’s prospectus of 1793 lists uncolored copies of America with 18 folio plates at 10s. 6d. and Visions of the Daughters of Albion with 11 folio plates at 7s. 6d., while the prices for colored copies in his letter of 9 June 1818 are £5.5.0 (America) and £3.3.0 (Visions). Subtracting the prices of uncolored copies from those for colored copies indicates that the price for coloring America was 5s. 3d. per plate and Visions 5s. ½d. per plate. If Blake calculated 5s. for coloring each of the 43 folio prints in Night Thoughts, he would have charged ten guineas per copy.The printed text of Night Thoughts is thrown in gratis.
About 1797 Blake was paid £10.10.0 for his 116 watercolor designs to Gray (BR[2] 246). Even with a more modest five guineas per copy, he would have received £157.10.0 for 30 copies. With this he seems to have been content.When Blake complained of neglect by the great illustrated book publishers Boydell, Macklin, and Bowyer (Notebook p. 23), he did not mention Richard Edwards, the publisher of his Night Thoughts, perhaps implying that he did not feel that he had been mistreated by Edwards.
Advertisements
The True Briton no. 1644 (31 March 1798) carried an advertisement for a
SPLENDID EDITION OF YOUNG’s NIGHT
THOUGHTS.
With 150 Engravings from original Designs.
This Day is published, Price One Guinea to Subscribers,
PART I. containing FOUR BOOKS of
YOUNG’s NIGHT THOUGHTS, illustrated with 43 very spirited Etchings, from the Designs of Mr. Blake.
The novelty of the style in which these Engravings are introduced, surrounding the Text they illustrate, and the masterly hand with which they are executed, must, it is presumed, command the attention of the Literati, the Amateur of the Fine Arts, and of the Artist.
The Paper and Type will be found correspondent with the elegance of such an Undertaking; and it is hoped that, from the extremely low price which the Editor has fixed upon the Work to Subscribers, it will meet with that liberal encouragement which its intrinsic merit, as well as its novelty, may justly claim from this enlightened and literary Age.
The Subscription for the whole Work is Five Guineas: one to be paid at the time of subscribing, and one on the delivery of each Part. The Book will be completed in Four Parts, with all the expedition consistent with the nature of a Work of such magnitude.
The Price will be considerably advanced to Non-Subscribers, on the publication of the Second Part, which is in forwardness.
London: Sold by Mr. Edwards, Pall-Mall; Mr. Robson and Mr. Faulder, New Bond-street; Mr. Payne, Mews Gate; Mr. White, Fleet-street; Messrs. Robinsons, Paternoster-row; Mr. Clarke, Bond-street; Mr. Bell, Oxford-street; and Mr. Harding, Pall-Mall.This advertisement and those in the Times, discussed below, were first recorded in Wayne C. Ripley, “‘In Great Forwardness’?: 1798 Advertisements for Volume Two of William Blake’s Night Thoughts” (see Ripley in Part VI); I have made minute adjustments on the basis of the originals. The booksellers are James Edwards, 77 Pall Mall; James Robson, 27 New Bond Street; Robert Faulder, 42 New Bond Street; Thomas Payne, Mews Gate; John White, 63 Fleet Street; George, George, and John Robinson, 25 Paternoster Row; William Clarke, 38 Bond Street; Joseph Bell, 148 Oxford Street; and Edward Harding, 98 Pall Mall.
Substantially the same announcement appeared in the Times nos. 4225 and 4227 (9, 11 July 1798):
Young’s Night Thoughts, ſplendid Edition, with 150 Engravings from original Deſigns.--This Day is publiſhed, price One Guinea to Subſcribers, Part the Firſt, containing Four Books, of
YOUNG’s NIGHT THOUGHTS; illuſtrated ….The Times version differs from that in the True Briton in (1) using the old-fashioned long “s” (ſ); (2) reducing the central five paragraphs to one; (3) changing “whole Work is” to “whole complete is”; (4) extending “Amateur” to “Amateurs”; (5) altering “Five”, “Four”, and “Second” to “5”, “4”, and “2d”; (6) changing “in forwardness” to “in great forwardness”, the only substantial change; (7) omitting “London:” before the list of booksellers; (8) reducing the initial capital letters to lower case in “Paper” and “Type”; and (9) replacing “Mr.” in “Mr. Edwards” with “Messrs.” and omitting the succeeding “Mr.”s and “Messrs.”
No second part was published,In his 1799 catalogue, Thomas Payne offered “Young’s Night Thoughts … 2 numbers … 1797 & 98,” but there is no other evidence that part 2 was ever published. though an untraced engraved proof of “the only extant leaf of Night 5” has been recorded.William Blake: Original Drawings, Engraved Work, Poetical Works, Books about Blake, Etc. Mainly from the Collection of Dr. Greville Macdonald (London: Francis Edwards, [?1930]), lot 44.
The 1798 advertisements echo the prospectus of spring 1797, correct its “forty” engravings to “43,” and add eight new booksellers while omitting Richard Edwards. The author of the advertisements (James Edwards?) is notably more emphatic about Blake’s plates—a “masterly hand” which will “command the attention of the Literati, the Amateur of the Fine Arts, and of the Artist”—than the author (Richard Edwards?) of the “Advertisement” in the 1797 edition, who conceived “it to be unnecessary to speak” of “the merit of Mr. Blake.”BR (2) 78-79, 76.
Did Richard Edwards Publish the Night Thoughts?
Richard Edwards was identified as the publisher in Farington’s diary (24 June 1796), in the prospectus (?spring 1797), along with James Edwards and Robert Bowyer, and on the title page (1797). However, the advertisements in the True Briton (March 1798) and the Times (July 1798) omit him and instead name James Edwards, Robson, Faulder, Payne, White, Robinsons, Clarke, Bell, and Harding, whilst the notice in the Monthly Magazine (June 1798) names only Robson.
For some time Richard Edwards had been withdrawing from business;See G. E. Bentley, Jr., The Edwardses of Halifax: The Making and Selling of Beautiful Books in London and Halifax by William, John, Richard, Thomas, and Especially James Edwards, the Medician Bookseller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). perhaps he did not publish Night Thoughts at all. The only known sale in 1797 is by his brother James on 6 November.BR(2) 79. After Richard Edwards withdrew from business, the Night Thoughts was taken over by a congery of booksellers headed by James Edwards, who advertised it in the True Briton and the Times. Then James Edwards too retired, and in 1798 James Robson took over the Night Thoughts.
The work sold very slowly, in part because the publishers kept changing. In 1811 Crabb Robinson claimed that Blake’s edition of Night Thoughts “is no longer to be bought.”[Crabb Robinson], Vaterländisches Museum (1811) (BR[2] 600). Robinson bought a copy on 27 Dec. 1810 (BR[2] 600fn).
The commission for the Night Thoughts was due to the genius of Richard Edwards. He chose a fine, expensive paper (1794 | J WHATMAN) and a fine artist and engraver (William Blake). However, his claim in the integral advertisement that “he has shrunk from no expence”BR(2) 76. is plainly false. He allowed William Blake to bear the major part of the expense of the only volume that was published.
And he scarcely published the work, or perhaps he did not publish it at all. He withdrew from business, apparently for personal reasons, just when the Night Thoughts was finished. Apparently he never advertised it in 1797 or sent out a review copy. The contemporary obscurity of Young’s Night Thoughts (1797) with Blake’s illustrations is significantly due to the commercial neglect of Richard Edwards.
All 43 Night Thoughts prints are reproduced in John Windle, Pictorial Blake (see 2011 in Part IV).
Part IV: Catalogues and Bibliographies
1846 8–11 June
Catalogue of the Valuable Library of the Late William Holgate, Esq. of the General Post Office … Which … Will Be Sold by Auction, by Messrs. S. Leigh Sotheby & Co. … June 8th, and Three Following Days. [1846]. <Bodleian>
“47 Beloe (Wm.) Poems and Translations, 1788—Borrow, Romantic Ballads, from the Danish, 1826—[Henry Card] Brother-in-Law, a Com.[edy] Lee Priory Press, 1817—Boyd, Plays, 1793—Blake, Poetical Sketches together 5 vol.” (Rodd, 7s.). This is perhaps copy K.NB: The five works are not said to be bound together.
1898 1 June
Catalogue of Some of Blake’s Pictures at “The Salterns,” Parkstone. [Parkstone, Dorset, 1 June 1898].
The catalogue of 35 pictures (34 by Blake)Butlin #194, 289, 294, 297, 301, 306, 310, 316, 320, 323, 434, 436, 440, 450, 452, 455-56, 459, 461, 464, 469, 483, 493, 497-99, 503, 505, 509, 511-12, 515, 525, 675. belonging to Captain Frederick John Butts, the grandson of Blake’s patron Thomas Butts, was almost certainly made for the visit to his home called The Salterns on 1 June 1898 by the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club. The catalogue cites “Rossetti’s Book on BLAKE,” i.e., William Michael Rossetti’s “Annotated Lists of Blake’s Paintings, Drawings, [Writings] and Engravings” in Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, “Pictor Ignotus” (1863) 2: 199-264 (the references correspond to the 1863 edition, not to that of 1880).
The only known copy of the catalogue is among the Mary Butts papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University; the cover is reproduced and the contents transcribed in Mary Lynn Johnson, “‘Catalogue of Some of Blake’s Pictures at “The Salterns”’: Captain Butts as Exhibitor, Litigator, and Co-Heir (with His Sister Blanche),” (see University of Toronto Quarterly in Part VI). Johnson is the source of all the information here.
1927
§Blake exhibition, Free Public Library, Lambeth.
The exhibition is known only from the §typed catalogue with a collection of Blake ephemera formed by Thomas Wright offered in §John Hart, catalogue 91 (March 2011), lot 75.
1971 21 May–4 June
An Exhibition of English Prints Blake to Sutherland May 21st-June 4th, 1971. Folio Fine Art 6 Stratford Place London W1N 0BH. [1971].
Seventy-two entries, with prices, including, under Blake, 17 Virgil prints at £460 (#2*), Young, Night Thoughts (1797), £390 (#3), Job “1825,” “Very fine proof impressions on French paper,” £6,000 (#4*), plus Calvert (#18-22) and Palmer (#23-35).
1982 15 September–1983 15 February
*David Bindman.
William Blake His Art and Times. 1982, §1988. <
BBS p. 298>
Review
§*Karen Mulhallen,
Canadian Forum 62, no. 723 (Dec.-Jan. 1982-83): 33-34.
1983
*Robert N. Essick.
The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue. 1983. <
BBS p. 301>
For addenda, see Blake 44.4 in Part VI.
1987
*
Printmaking in Britain 1775-1965: Two Centuries of the Art of the Print in Britain [at the]
William Weston Gallery. Catalogue no. 1 (1987, year 20, issue no. 203). London: William Weston Gallery, 1987.
Blake is 96-100, Palmer 101-05.
1991
*Robert N. Essick.
William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations. 1991. <
BBS p. 310>
For addenda, see Blake 44.4 in Part VI.
2003 31 March–2 May
*
William Blake at Syracuse University. 2003. <
Blake (2007§)>
The catalogue is an oblong 4o with 52 unnumbered pages and 79 reproductions (34 from Innocence [Q], 13 from Gay, Fables [1793], 22 from Job [1826]).
2006 15 February–1 May
*Martin Myrone.
Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination. 2006. <
Blake (2007)>
Review
§*Stéphane Guégan,
“Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination,” Tribune de l’Art 24 March 2006 (in French).
2006 2 May
*
William Blake: Designs for Blair’s Grave [Sotheby’s auction]. 2006. <
Blake (2007)>
Reviews, etc.
§Anon.,
“The Watercolour Windfall Worth £5m,” Scotsman 13 May 2003.
§*Jeremy Lott, “Blake Watercolours Export Barred,”
Country Life 31 March 2005.
§*Didier Rykner,
“Dix-neuf aquarelles de William Blake interdites temporairement de sortie du Royaume Uni,” Tribune de l’Art 16 May 2005 (in French).
§Carol Vogel,
“The Splintering of a Masterpiece,” New York Times 15 Feb. 2006.
§Anon., “Blake Collection to Be Broken Up and Sold in New York,”
Independent [London] 17 Feb. 2006.
§*Didier Rykner,
“Les aquarelles de Blake pour Designs for Blair’s Grave dispersées aux enchères,” Tribune de l’Art 17 Feb. 2006 (in French).
§Andreas Whittam Smith, “Paintings That Are Worth Saving for the Nation,”
Independent [London] 20 Feb. 2006.
§Anon., “19 Blakes Tumble out of Attic,”
Bahrain Tribune 5 April 2006.
*Will Bennett,
“Art Sales: Dream Discovery Turns to Dust,” Telegraph [London] 2 May 2006 (very full and useful).
§*Didier Rykner,
“Les Amis du Louvre acquièrent une acquarelle de William Blake pour Designs for Blair’s Grave,” Tribune de l’Art 3 May 2006 (in French).
2007 7 April–2008 6 April
*David Bindman.
Mind-Forg’d Manacles: William Blake and Slavery. 2007. <
Blake (2008)>
Review
Jeremy Tambling (see
Blake 44.4 in Part VI).
2008 26 January–20 April
Blake’s Shadow: William Blake and His Artistic Legacy. <
Blake (2009)>
Review
Jeremy Tambling (see
Blake 44.4 in Part VI).
2009 2 April–28 June
*Michael Phillips, ed., with the assistance of Catherine de Bourgoing.
William Blake (1757-1827): Le Génie visionnaire du romantisme anglais. [2009]. <
Blake (2010)>
Reviews
§*Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond and Didier Rykner,
“William Blake: Le Génie visionnaire du romantisme anglais,” Tribune de l’Art 5 June 2009 (in French).
§*María Paz Amaro,
“William Blake: la exposición de 1809,” Istor: Revista de historia internacional 10, no. 38 (2009): 92-99 (in Spanish).
§Dominique Blanc, “William Blake, génie visionnaire,”
Connaissance des Arts no. 670 (2009): 16-23 (in French) (under §?Anon. in <
Blake (2010)>).
*Philippa Simpson (see
Blake 45.1 in Part VI).
2009 20 April–4 October
*Martin Myrone, ed.
Seen in My Visions: A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures. 2009. <
Blake (2010)>
Review
Paul Flux,
Albion Magazine (autumn 2009) (it leaves an “impression ... of worthiness”).
2010 8 November–2011 4 April
§Blake and Physiognomy. Devised and curated by Philippa Simpson and Sibylle Erle. Tate Britain, London.
There was no catalogue. The display was associated with the publication of Sibylle Erle, Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy (2010) <Blake (2011§)>.
Review
Martin Butlin,
Burlington Magazine 153 (2011): 608 (with another) (Butlin dates the display Jan.-March 2011).
2011 25 January
Property from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp Sold for the Primary Benefit of Princeton University. Sotheby’s (New York).
*Lot 149: William Blake,
A Woman Enthroned, Two Figures on Each Side, pen and black ink (late 1770s) [Butlin #99] (estimate $7,000-$10,000 [sold for $5,313 to John Windle for Robert N. Essick]).
*Lot 209:
Sketches for America and Other Books (recto);
The Lion Lying Down with the Ox (verso), 26.3 x 20 cm., given by Grace Lansing Lambert to Ryskamp 1969 (estimate $30,000-$50,000 [sold for $56,250 to John Windle for Robert N. Essick]).
2011 22 March
Auction 18784: Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs. Bonhams (London).
*
Lot 24:
Poetical Sketches ([Y]) (estimate £60,000-£80,000 [sold for £60,000 plus buyer’s premium of £12,000 = £72,000 to John Windle for Robert N. Essick]).
2011 29 March
Auction 19386: Papers and Portraits: The Roy Davids Collection Part II. Bonhams (London).
*
Lot 264: Blake’s letter to Ozias Humphry of 18 Jan. 1808 (A) (estimate £50,000-£60,000 [not sold]).
2011 March
Omnium Gatherum. Catalogue 48. San Francisco: John Windle, 2011. 4
o.
A gorgeously illustrated catalogue with splendid treasures including
*28: Job (1826), “Proof” set, including the printed *label (unpriced) and Linnell’s draft prospectus plus “the original hand-lettered wrappers” ($82,500) [previously offered in Windle catalogue 46 (2009), lot 8]. Robert N. Essick bought the draft prospectus and the wrappers.
*29: George Cumberland’s card (1827) printed in pale brown, no indication of whether this copy is recorded in Essick, Separate Plates ($17,500).
*30: Hayley, Little Tom (1800), Muir’s excellent facsimile [1886] ($750).
*31: Gay, Fables (1793), “very tall, possibly large-paper” ($1500).
*32: Hayley, Ballads (1805), “very fine copy with large margins showing the plate marks. Bookplate of Lord Eversley,” “with the first three plates in the first state” ($6750).
*33: Malkin, A Father’s Memoirs of His Child (1806) ($1875).
*34: Stedman, Surinam (1796), “large-paper copy,” “every plate with fine original coloring” (3 heightened with gold), “virtually identical” to a copy sold to Essick in 2000, in “contemporary marbled boards” ($29,750).
2011 29 November–2012 26 February
§William Blake exhibition at the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, Moscow.
The exhibition was organized with help from the British Council, with 150 exhibits from the Tate, British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, Petworth House, and Britten-Pears Foundation (Aldeburgh). The apparatus includes an interactive education program.
Reviews, puffs, etc.By Jan. 2012 there were 3,343,000 online accounts of the exhibition; the first hundred I saw seemed to be merely publicity. I have not tried very hard—indeed scarcely at all—to find reviews, both because the vast majority of them simply recycle publicity handouts from the museum and because I can’t read Cyrillic script.
*Joy Neumeyer,
“Mysterious Visions,” Moscow News 12 Dec. 2011.
Anon., “Blake Exhibition in Moscow” (see
Blake 45.3 in Part VI).
2011 10 December–2012 1 June
§Blake painting on display at Mead Art Museum, Amherst College.
Notice
*Anon.,
“A New Blake for Amherst,” Amherst College online notice (Blake’s tempera of
The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter was given by Dr. Henry deForest Webster, ’48).
2011 [11 December]
Pictorial Blake: A Catalogue of Recently Acquired Original Blake Illustrations from a Private Collection, Along with the Reference Library and a Complete Run of the Blake Trust Publications, and Other Facsimiles. Also Blake Facsimiles from the Biblioteca La Solana, Printed by Robert N. Essick. San Francisco: John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller, 2011. 4
o, 80 pp., 135 reproductions; no ISBN.
There are 249 lots, nos. 1-118 being mostly single prints by Blake taken from commercial books.
*“A Note on the Blake Facsimiles from the Biblioteca La Solana” (76-79). No. 248 and the previous lot [sold, no number] are prints pulled in July and Aug. 2011 from “relief photo-etchings” on copper and zinc made “in the 1970s” by “professional craftsmen” and Robert N. Essick of No Natural Religion pl. a2, Songs pls. 3, 8, 18, 24, 33, 47, America pls. 1-2, 12, 14, and The Ghost of Abel pls. 1-2 using “intaglio ink” and J Whatman | 1794 or nineteenth-century or “modern” paper.
The Windle catalogue reproductions include all 22 for Job (1826), all 13 for Blair’s Grave (1813), and all 43 for Young’s Night Thoughts (1797).
2011
§*Christopher Baker.
English Drawings and Watercolours 1600-1900 [in the]
National Gallery of Scotland. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2011.
The Blakes in the National Gallery of Scotland include Hecate (Butlin #317), God Writing upon the Tables of the Covenant (#448), and Job Confessing His Presumption to God Who Answers from the Whirlwind (#461).
Part V: Books Owned by William Blake the Poet
Swedenborg, Emanuel, The Wisdom of Angels, Concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom (1788)
The title-page transcription in BB p. 696 should be emended to read “PRINTED AND SOLD BY W. CHALKLEN, GROCERS COURT, | POULTRY. | M.DCC.LXXXVIII” (that is, add “AND SOLD” and start a new line before “POULTRY.”). Blake’s copy in the British Library is reproduced in §Eighteenth Century Collections Online, though his marginalia are rarely legible.
Part VI: Criticism, Biography, and Scholarly Studies
*Adams, Hazard. Blake’s Margins: An Interpretive Study of the Annotations. 2009. <Blake (2011)>
Reviews
*Morton D. Paley,
New Books on Literature 19 (22 May 2010) <
Blake (2011)§> (“Adams makes Blake’s thought accessible in non-‘Blakean’ terms”).
*Alexander S. Gourlay (see
Blake 45.2, below).
§Albuquerque, Sebastião Júnior da Cunha. “Pantheism in the Romantic Poetry: William Blake and William Wordsworth.” Revista Seringal de Idéias 1.1 (2008).
Ando, Eiko. “William Blake’s Religious World.” Muroran Kogyo Daigaku Kiyo: Memoirs of the Muroran Institute of Technology 60 (March 2011): 1-8.
Ankarsjö, Magnus. William Blake and Religion: A New Critical View. 2009. <Blake (2010)§>
Review
*Christopher Rowland (see
Blake 45.1, below).
*Anon. “Blake Remembered after a Century.” Literary Digest [New York] 94, no. 1951 (ns no. 11) (10 Sept. 1927): 26-27, plus more reproductions on pp. 28 and 29.
A summary of memorials of Blake by John Freeman, Bookman <BB #1632>, S. P. B. Mais, Daily Telegraph <BBS p. 557> (see Mais, below), and R. R. Tatlack, Daily Telegraph <BBS p. 657> (see Tatlack, below).
§Anon. “Forged Bank-Notes.” European Magazine 73 (March 1818): 237.
In the context of a spate of forged Bank of England bank notes, and thirty-two hangings for bank-note forgery, Anon.’s plan reprints Tilloch’s testimonial for his proposal for a new, forgery-proof bank note of 5 April 1797 (see BR[2] 78) with its list of nineteen engravers supporting it, including Blake. See Mark Crosby, “Blake and the Banknote Crises of 1797, 1800, and 1818,” under University of Toronto Quarterly, below.
The plan seems to be reprinted in the Times, 21 March 1818, New Times, 1 April 1818: 4, and Philosophical Magazine, 1 July 1818.The records of these in Newspaper Archive are so heavily corrupted as to be almost illegible.
Anon. “22.02.11 London EC1.” Times Literary Supplement 25 Feb. 2011: 3.
A photograph of Blake’s tombstone in Bunhill Fields (now “becoming a Grade I listed Park”), with a paragraph about where he’s buried.
Anon. “William Blake’s Homes in Lambeth and Sussex.” Spectator (1916) <BB #1080>
It was written by Alfred G. Hopkins, author of “William Blake’s House at Lambeth,” Times Literary Supplement (1918) <BB #1882>.
§Arvine, Kazlitt. “Blake, the Poet, Painter, and Engraver.” Cyclopaedia of Anecdotes of Literature and the Fine Arts. 1851, 1852. <BB #1091A-B> C. §1853. <Blake (2009)> D. The Cyclopædia of Anecdotes of Literature and the Fine Arts; Containing a Copious and Choice Selection of Anecdotes of the Various Forms of Literature, of the Arts, of Architecture, Engravings, Music, Poetry, Painting and Sculpture, and of the Most Celebrated Literary Characters and Artists of Different Countries and Ages, etc. … With Numerous Illustrations. 3rd ed. Boston: Gould and Lincoln; New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Company; Cincinnati: Geo. S. Blanchard, 1856. [Stereotype ed.] 250. <Princeton> E. §1967. <Blake (2009)>
Atkinson, Juliette. “The Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus (1863).” Victorian Biography Reconsidered: A Study of Nineteenth-Century ‘Hidden’ Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 194-205.
§Bai, Feng-Xin. “[William Blake: A Leap from Innocence to Experience—On the Contraries in William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience].” [Journal of Guangzhou Teachers College] (2009). In Chinese.
Bai, Feng-Xin, and Ping She. “Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke—Cong Tian Zhen dao Jing Yan de Fei Yue—Bu Lai Ke Tian Zhen yu Jing Yan zhi Ge Chuang Zuo Si Xiang Zhuan Bian zhi Yan Jiu [William Blake: The Leap from Innocence to Experience—A Study of the Changing Creative Mind in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience].” He Bei Qing Nian Guan Li Gan Bu Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Hebei Junior Cadres’ Training Institute] no. 6 (2010): 61-63. In Chinese.
A commentary on Blake’s change from the “fancy of the innocent and happy world” to his “recognition and criticism of the rotten experienced world,” saying that this represents the poet’s maturity in creative thinking.
§Bakić, Tanja. “Mistični prijelazi—strašna simetrija [Mystical Transitions—A Fearful Symmetry].” Zeničke sveske [Bosnia and Herzegovina] no. 12/10 (2010): 75-80. In Montenegrin.
About Blake’s illustrations for the Book of Job.
§Bakić, Tanja. “Potraga za zagubljenim značenjima: rođenje mita iz muzike—uporedni pogled na lične mitologije Blejka i Morisona [Pursuing the Forgotten Meanings: The Birth of a Myth in Music: A Comparative Look at the Personal Mythologies of Blake and Morrison].” Vijesti [Montenegro] 24 Dec. 2011: 10. In Montenegrin.
This is a shorter version of the essay in Croatian, “Utjecaji Poezije Williama Blakea na rock glazbu Jima Morrisona,” below.
§Bakić, Tanja. “Sumorni fantomi kosmičke samoće: o misticismu Viljema Blejka [On the Mysticism of William Blake: Gloomy Phantoms of Cosmical Solitude].” Vijesti [Montenegro] 30 Oct. 2010: 8. In Montenegrin.
§Bakić, Tanja. “Utjecaji Poezije Williama Blakea na rock glazbu Jima Morrisona [The Influence of William Blake’s Poetry on the Rock Music of Jim Morrison].” Nova Istra [Croatia] nos. 3-4 (2006): 168-88. In Croatian.
A shorter version in Montenegrin is in her “Potraga za zagubljenim značenjima,” above.
§Bakić, Tanja. “Žena na i u djelu Williama Blakea [Female Characters in the Works of William Blake].” Zeničke sveske [Bosnia and Herzegovina] no. 09/09 (2009): 104-13. In Montenegrin.
§Barlow, Paul. “The Aryan Blake: Hinduism, Art and Revelation in William Blake’s Pitt and Nelson Paintings.” Visual Culture in Britain 12.3 (2011): 277-92.
About Blake’s use of Indian imagery.
§Barry, Kevin M. “William Blake and William Cowper.” Language, Music and the Sign. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 56-93 (chapter 2). B. §1989. C. 2009.
It includes “Autonomous Song: Chabanon and Blake” (65-77).
§Beer, John. “Lamb, Coleridge, and Blake.” Charles Lamb Bulletin 136 (2006): 105-06.
§Behrendt, Stephen. “‘A Defect in their Education’: Blake, Haydon, and the Misguided British Audience.” Keats-Shelley Review 24.1 (Oct. 2010): 53-65.
Bentley, G. E., Jr. “Blake and a Fairy’s Funeral.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).1 (March 2011): 65-66.
The number of reports of fairy funerals 1824-40 indicates that Blake’s account is scarcely “an indication of ‘disordered ... sensations’ or fey eccentricity.”
Bentley, G. E., Jr. “‘I hear a voice you cannot hear’: Madness, Blake, and the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes (1833).” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).1 (March 2011): 66-73.
*Bentley, G. E., Jr. The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake. 2001, 2003. <Blake (2002, 2004)>
Reviews
Donald M. Hassler,
Utopian Studies 12.2 (March 2001): 262-63 (“The book is most valuable as a rich mine of detail”; scholars “will love this book”; the author is retired “but still immensely productive”).
§Anon., “The World of Paperbacks,”
Critical Review 22 Sept. 2006 (by “the leading Blake scholar”).
Bentley, G. E., Jr. “‘William Blake flashed across the path’ in Snippets: Blake in the Ladies’ Cabinet (1840).” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).1 (March 2011): 73-74.
The Google snippet reproduction from the Ladies’ Cabinet (1840) is really from the Illustrated London Magazine (1867).
Bentley, G. E., Jr. William Blake’s Conversations. 2008. <Blake (2009)>
Review
*Alexander S. Gourlay (see
Blake 45.3, below).
*Berger, Harry, Jr. “Reading Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose.’” Caterpillage: Reflections on Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life Painting. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. 7-9.
§Berger, Richard. “‘Never Seek to Tell Thy Love’: E-Adapting Blake in the Classroom.” Redefining Adaptation Studies, ed. Dennis Cutchins, Laurence Raw, and James M. Welsh. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010. 31-43.
A version is available in Bournemouth University Research Online.
§Black, Jonathan [Mark Booth]. “Swedenborg, Blake and the Sexual Roots of Romanticism.” The Secret History of the World. 2007. B. §Rev. ed. London: Quercus, 2010.
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume 44, number 4 (spring 2011)
*Robert N. Essick. “Blake in the Marketplace, 2010.” 116-42. (A customarily meticulous and deft record of sales and offerings of works by and associated with Blake. “Editors’ note:
Color versions of all illustrations are online at the journal’s web site ….” An “Appendix: New Information on Blake’s Engravings” [141-42] has addenda for his
The Separate Plates of William Blake [1983] and
William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations [1991].)
Review
Jeremy Tambling. Mind-Forg’d Manacles: William Blake and Slavery, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, 26 Jan.–6 April 2008; Blake’s Shadow: William Blake and His Artistic Legacy, Whitworth Gallery 26 Jan.–20 April 2008. 142-43. (Largely about Blake’s Shadow, which seemed “patchy”; in
Mind-Forg’d Manacles (the catalogue), “some of Bindman’s interpretations ... seemed oversimplifying.”)
Newsletter
Anon. “
Blake Goes Online.” 143. (From vol. 45, no. 1 [summer 2011],
Blake will be published both on paper and online; “the online and print content will be the same.”)
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume 45, number 1 (summer 2011)
*G. E. Bentley, Jr., with the assistance of Hikari Sato for Japanese publications.
“William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2010.” 4-36. (“Editors’ notes: Illustrations to the checklist are available in the online version of the article ….
Addenda and corrigenda to
Blake Records, 2nd ed. (2004), now appear online. They are updated yearly in conjunction with the publication of the checklist.”)
Reviews
*Philippa Simpson.
Michael Phillips, ed., with the assistance of Catherine de Bourgoing, William Blake (1757-1827): Le Génie visionnaire du romantisme anglais (2009). 37-38. (“It is hard to excuse the large overlaps among several of the essays,” and the catalogue of Blake’s graphic work is oddly supported by “the concentration upon Blake’s writing.”)
*Christopher Rowland.
Magnus Ankarsjö, William Blake and Religion: A New Critical View (2009). 38-39. (“This book is an interesting read,” but it “omits key aspects of Blake’s [religious] concerns.”)
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume 45, number 2 (fall 2011)
In memory of Elizabeth B. (Beth) Bentley, 1930–2011
Note that the online version has more reproductions, some of them in color (the reproductions in the hard-copy version are only in black and white).
Jennifer Davis Michael.
“Eternity in the Moment: William Blake and Mary Oliver.” 44-50. (The twenty-first-century poet Mary Oliver writes poems with faint echoes of Blake.)
*Morton D. Paley.
“William Blake, George Romney, and The Life of George Romney, Esq.” 50-65. (A careful presentation of the context of Hayley’s biography and its illustrations.)
*Robert N. Essick.
“Attribution and Reproduction: Death Pursuing the Soul through the Avenues of Life.” 66-70. (Pace Butlin, “I believe that
Death Pursuing is entirely Blake’s work, [although] I must confess to some slight misgivings” [70].)
Review
*Alexander S. Gourlay.
Hazard Adams, Blake’s Margins: An Interpretive Study of the Annotations (2009). 70-71. (Adams’s book is “eminently sensible and learned.”)
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume 45, number 3 (winter 2011-12)
*Angus Whitehead.
“‘an excellent saleswoman’: The Last Years of Catherine Blake.” 76-90. (With copious and convincing facts, and contrary to
BR[2] and all other predecessors, Whitehead demonstrates that Catherine Blake lived at 1 Queen Street, Mayfair, in March 1828–spring 1829 and at 17 Upper Charlton Street in spring 1829–October 1831.)
Reviews
*Tristanne Connolly.
Laura Quinney, William Blake on Self and Soul (2009). 90-91. (“Quinney’s emphasis on authentic experience of the self leads her away from adequate research and precise reading.”)
Nelson Hilton.
Wayne C. Ripley and Justin Van Kleeck, eds., Editing and Reading Blake (2010). 92-94. (In all this process of “editionings,” “immersive textuality,” and “electronic heuristics” which “remediate” Blake, “would it be such apostasy to say that
none of this matters …?”)
*Alexander S. Gourlay.
Gerald E. Bentley, Jr., William Blake’s Conversations: A Compilation, Concordance, and Rhetorical Analysis (2008). 94-96. (Bentley has “created something rich, strange, and likely to prove enduringly useful,” especially in the concordance and the “fascinating” evidence “about the way he [Blake] probably pronounced words.”)
*Christopher Z. Hobson.
Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee, eds., Blake and Conflict (2009). 96-98. (The volume “does a great deal both to extend knowledge of Blake’s intellectual and historical contexts and ... to sustain an ongoing debate over his complicity with or defiance of ideologies of oppression.”)
*Molly Anne Rothenberg.
R. Paul Yoder, The Narrative Structure of William Blake’s Poem Jerusalem: A Revisionist Interpretation (2010). 99-101. (Because “Yoder has truly understood the purport of the poem’s form,” his book “offers an indispensable introduction to
Jerusalem.”)
Kathryn Freeman.
James Rovira, Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety (2010). 101-02. (The “argument [is] broad and shallow”; “the book’s breadth jeopardizes depth.”)
Mary Silverstein.
Mickle Maher, There Is a Happiness That Morning Is (Theater Oobleck, Chicago, 2011). 103. (“A witty, amusing, and moving love story about two college professors,” inspired by “Infant Joy” and “The Sick Rose.” “Editors’ note: Photographs of the production are in the online version of this review.”)
Newsletter
Anon. “New Members of
Blake’s Advisory Board.” 103. (They are Tristanne Connolly and Tilar Mazzeo.)
Anon. “Blake Exhibition in Moscow.” 103. (Announcement of “the first major exhibition of Blake’s works in Russia ... at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.”)
§Boer, Roland. “E. P. Thompson, Antinomianism, and the Theology of William Blake.” Sino-Christian Studies [Taiwan] 8 (2009): 31-52.
§Boer, Roland. “William Blake and the Politics of Radical Dissent.” Criticism of Theology: On Marxism and Theology III. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
§Boland, Tom. “Romantic Subjectivities: Blake, Wordsworth and the Trace of the ‘Other.’” Textual Practice 23.4 (2009): 559-80.
Booth, Mark.
See Black, Jonathan (his pseudonym), above.
§Brett, Louise. “Paper Tiger? William Blake at 10+2 Level.” Journal of NELTA [Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association, Kathmandu] 3.1-2 (1998): 52-58.
§Buchsbaum, Julianne. “Abjection and the Melancholic Imagination: Towards a Poststructuralist Psychoanalytic Reading of Blake’s The Book of Urizen.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net no. 56 (Nov. 2009).
§Butts, Mary Jane Briggs. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club (1898): lxvi-lxix.
The paper, based on A. T. Story’s life of Blake (1893), was delivered by the hon. secretary of the club on the occasion of their visit to her home at the Salterns to see the Blake pictures there; the author (1863-1944) was the wife of Captain Frederick John Butts (1833-1905), the grandson of Blake’s patron Thomas Butts.
The account of the Blakes in the nude reading Paradise Lost in their garden has a
(Note by Captain Butts.—He remembers, as a small boy, hearing that his grandfather emphatically denied that there was a word of truth in this story,A. E. Briggs, “Mr. Butts, the Friend and Patron of Blake,” Connoisseur 19 (1907): 95, wrote that Butts’s grandson “distinctly remembers hearing his grandfather declare that there was no truth in it” (see BR[2] xxvi-xxvii). Ada Briggs was the aunt of the widow of Captain Butts. which has however found a place in all Blake’s numerous biographies.)
The information here derives from Mary Lynn Johnson, “‘Catalogue of Some of Blake’s Pictures at “The Salterns”’: Captain Butts as Exhibitor, Litigator, and Co-Heir (with His Sister Blanche)” (see University of Toronto Quarterly, below).
Campbell-Johnston, Rachel. “William Blake” and “Palmer Meets Blake.” Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. Chapters 6 (60-67) and 7 (68-75).
§Canaday, John. The Lives of the Painters. Vol. 2: Baroque Painters. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969. 674-85.
§Cavill, Paul, Heather Ward, et al. “William Blake, Songs of Innocence and [of] Experience.” The Christian Tradition in English Literature: Poetry, Plays, and Shorter Prose. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007. 262-65.
Chen, Hong. “Bu Lai Ke de ‘Hu’ de ‘Tian Zhen Shi Yue Du’ [An ‘Innocent’ of Blake’s ‘Tyger’].” Wan Guo Wen Xue Yan Jiu [Foreign Literature Studies] no. 2 (2011): 79-85. In Chinese.
A “naive” reading of “The Tyger” by “seeing the tiger as a real animal in the first place.” The poem’s “realistic concern about animals” reflects Blake’s thoughts on the issue of real innocence.
Chilton, Martin [digital culture editor]. “Royal Wedding: Jerusalem Triumphant at Kate and Will’s Wedding: Stars of stage and screen tweet to hail William Blake’s famous hymn, which was performed at the royal wedding in Westminster Abbey.” Telegraph [London] 29 April 2011.
“And did those feet ...,” “first composed by William Blake” and “later written to music ... by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry,” “was made the official anthem of the England football team” in 2000, and in 2008 the dean of Southwark, the Very Rev. Colin Slee, “advised ... that the hymn would not be sung because it was ‘not in the glory of God.’”
Coleridge, John Duke. The Necessity of Modernism in the Arts, Especially When Devoted to the Service of Religion, … Read at the Quarterly Meeting at the [?Exeter] College Hall, October 7, 1853. <Bodleian>
“We have lost, and cannot regain, for the Church the powers of Sir Joshua and Flaxman, of Blake and Turner; but we have great artists still left” (13). The heading describes the author as “John Duke Coleridge, Esq., M. A., Barrister at Law, Late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.” John Duke Coleridge (1820-94), first Baron Coleridge (1873), lawyer, M.P., was a great-nephew of the poet.
*Connolly, Tristanne J. William Blake and the Body. 2002. <Blake (2003)>
Review
W. B. Gerard,
Eighteenth-Century Book Reviews Online 13 July 2009.
§Cords, John N. “‘Word, work, & Wish’: Labor and Productivity in William Blake.” Michigan PhD, 2011. 325 pp. Full text in ProQuest.
About “the political valence of labor.”
§Cornils, Ingo. “Furchtbare Symmetrien: Romantische Verwandtschaften im Werk der Dichter-Maler Hermann Hesse und William Blake.” Arcadia: International Journal for Literary Studies 46.1 (July 2011): 149-66. In German.
“An intermedial comparison and an analysis of shared motifs and themes in the works of William Blake and Hermann Hesse”; Hesse’s work is a “continuation of Blake’s visionary mysticism.”
§Crawford, Joseph. “‘I beheld Milton with astonishment’: The Case of William Blake.” Raising Milton’s Ghost: John Milton and the Sublime of Terror in the Early Romantic Period. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.
§Curran, Stuart, ed. The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. B. §*2nd ed. 2010.
§Darnill, Elizabeth Jane. “‘Four-fold vision see’: Allegory in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser and William Blake.” Exeter PhD, 2010.
*Davis, Michael. William Blake: A New Kind of Man. 1977. <BBS p. 449>
Review
§Bruce Stillians,
Biography 1.3 (summer 1978): 86-88.
§Dykstra, James A. “Exploitation, Rape, Bondage—Blake’s Revolutionary Reaction.” Rollins Undergraduate Research Journal 5.1 (spring 2011).
§Eaves, Morris, with the Blake Archive editors and staff. “The Persistence of Vision: Images and Imaging at the William Blake Archive.” RLG DigiNews 4.1 (Feb. 2000).
Elliott, Clare. “William Blake and America: Freedom and Violence in the Atlantic World.” Comparative American Studies (2009) <Blake (2011)§>
About “the American Transcendentalists’ reading of Songs of Innocence and [of] Experience (1794) in the 1840s” with “a reading of Blake’s America: a Prophecy (1793) showing that the Civil War fulfilled his prophecy of inevitable future conflict” (209).
§Erle, Sibylle. Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy. 2010. <Blake (2011)§>
Review
Martin Butlin,
Burlington Magazine 153 (2011): 608 (with another) (“The account of the publication of Lavater’s several writings is detailed and fascinating”).
§Erle, Sibylle. “The Myth of the Lost Original: Blake’s and Lavater’s Search for Divine Likeness.” In the Embrace of the Swan: Anglo-German Mythologies in Literature, the Visual Arts and Cultural Theory. Ed. Rüdiger Görner and Angus Nicholls. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010. Spectrum Literaturwissenschaft/Spectrum Literature 18. 211-30.
Eyres, Harry. “A Modern Jerusalem.” Financial Times 24-25 Dec. 2011: 11.
Reflections on singing Blake’s “Jerusalem” hymn in school.
Feng, Ke-Fei. “Ren Lei Ling Hun de Liang Zhong Dui Li Zhuang Tai [On the Two Opposing States of the Human Soul—An Analysis of Blake’s Dissection of the Human Soul as Represented by ‘The Lamb’ and ‘The Tyger’].” Anhui Wen Xue [Anhui Journal of Literature] no. 2 (2010): 116. In Chinese.
A brief discussion of the significance of the opposing imageries of “The Lamb” in Innocence and “The Tyger” in Experience.
§Ferrara, Mark S. “Blake’s Jerusalem as Perennial Utopia.” Utopian Studies 22.1 (2011): 19-33.
§Freedman, Linda. “Tom Altizer and William Blake: The Apocalypse of Belief.” Literature and Theology [issue on “Poetry and Belief”] 25.1 (March 2011): 20-31.
Fry, Roger. “Blake and British Art.” Nation 14 (7 Feb. 1914): 791-92 <BBS p. 534 (under Kerr)> B. §A Roger Fry Reader. Ed. Christopher Reed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
*Gilchrist, Alexander. Life of William Blake, “Pictor Ignotus.” 1863, 1880 …. <BB #1680, BBS p. 484, Blake (1999, 2002, 2007, 2010, 2011)>
Reviews, announcements, etc. (1863 ed.)
“Life of William Blake, the Artist. By Alexander Gilchrist. With numerous Illustrations from his Works,” Athenaeum no. 1771 (5 Oct. 1861): 455 (an advertisement; notice that “
Pictor Ignotus” has not yet been substituted for “the Artist,” suggesting that the change was made after Gilchrist’s death in 1861).
Reviews (1880 ed.)
Frederick Wedmore, “William Blake,”
Temple Bar (1881) B.
Littell’s Living Age (1881) C.
Eclectic Magazine (1881) <
BB #2939A-C> D.
Good Literature [New York] 2, no. 47 (20 Aug. 1881): 166-70 (a digest of Blake’s life from Gilchrist; “To know Blake is to be glad to be with him” [167]). E.
Library Magazine of American and Foreign Thought 8 (1881): 615-31.
Charles Hargrove, “
William Blake,”
Modern Review 2 (July 1881): 565-77 (very sympathetic to Blake—the book is “a real delight to eye and mind”—despite the fact that he was “an artist—who never learned to paint, nor even the refinements of his own lower craft of engraver” [565, 566]).
§*Giunta, Graziana. “La Forma dell’Immaginazione: William Blake e l’antroposofia.” Libera Conoscenza [spiritual science web site] ([2006]). 47 pp. In Italian.
*Goldsmith, Steven. Unbuilding Jerusalem: Apocalypse and Romantic Representation. 1994. <Blake (1995)>
Review
§Jacqueline LeBlanc,
Philosophy and Literature 18.1 (April 1994): 162-63.
§Goss, Erin M. “What Is Called Corporeal: William Blake and the Question of the Body.” Eighteenth Century 51.4 (winter 2010): 413-30.
§Gourlay, Alexander S. “More on Blake’s ‘Auguries.’” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 522-23.
See Paul Miner, “Interpreting Blake’s ‘Auguries,’” below.
§Green, Matthew J. A. “‘She Brings Apocalypse’: Sex, Imagination and Redemptive Transgression in William Blake and the Graphic Novels of Alan Moore.” Literature Compass 8.10 (Oct. 2011): 739-56.
§Green, Matthew J. A. “Voices in the Wilderness: Satire and Sacrifice in Blake and Byron.” Byron Journal 36.2 (Dec. 2008): 117-29.
*Haggarty, Sarah. Blake’s Gifts: Poetry and the Politics of Exchange. 2010. <Blake (2011)§>
Review
Shirley Dent,
Times Literary Supplement 18 March 2011: 25 (it is often “acute” and “gripping,” but “dollops [of “untrammelled theory”] swirl into the narrative” “at inopportune moments”).
*Haggarty, Sarah, and Jon Mee, eds. Blake and Conflict. 2009. <Blake (2010)>
Review
*Christopher Z. Hobson (see
Blake 45.3, above).
§Heath, Peter. “All Text and No Image Makes Blake a Dull Artist: Inseparable Interplay between Poetry and Picture in Blake’s Multimedia Art.” At the Edge 1 (2010): 92-114.
Hedley, Gill. “Mat Collishaw, Tracey Emin, Paula Rego: At the Foundling: Songs of Innocence, Experience, Ambivalence.” Childhood in the Past: An International Journal 3.1 (Sept. 2010): 5-14.
Compares the “sentiments” of the works contributed in 2010 to the Foundling Museum (London).
§Heymans, Peter. “Eating Girls: Deleuze and Guattari’s Becoming-Animal and the Romantic Sublime in William Blake’s Lyca Poems.” Humanimalia 3.1 (fall 2011): 1-30.
Hoshino, Eriko. “William Blake’s Influence upon William Butler Yeats, as a Young Poet: From the Gnostic Viewpoint (#1).” Seibu Bunri Daigaku Service Keieigakubu Kenkyu Kiyo: Journal of Bunri University of Hospitality 17 (2010): 57-62.
Hou, Xia. “Wai Lian Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge zhong de Nǚ Xing Xing Xiang Fen Xi [An Analysis of the Female Imagery in William Blake’s Poems].” Nei Meng Gu Dian Da Xue Kan [Journal of Inner Mongolia Radio and TV University] 121.3 (2010): 53-55. In Chinese.
An analysis of four types of women found in Blake’s poems: “perfect ladies in illusion, nuns wandering on snowy ground, women aping men in greed and desire, and androgynous women.”
*Hutchings, Kevin. “William Blake and the Music of the Songs.” Romanticism on the Net (2007) <Blake (2009)>
He “examines Blake’s musical practice in relation to the poetry and designs of Songs,” which is part of a “multi-media project entitled Songs of William Blake, a CD featuring musical interpretations [some audible here] of fourteen poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience ... and a substantial liner-note commentary (from which the current essay is partly derived).”
Ibata, Hélène. “William Blake’s Visual Sublime: The ‘Eternal Labours.’” European Romantic Review (2010) <Blake (2011)§>
“A similar conception of the sublime as process can be discerned in the visual dimension of Blake’s art” (32)—but no visual image is reproduced.
Imaizumi, Yoko. “William Blake to DVD Kenkyu Shiryo to Sexuality [William Blake, DVD Research Resources, and Sexuality].” Kokusai Nihon Kenkyu [International Studies of Japan] 1 (2009): 23-52. In Japanese.
§*Ironside, R. “The Tate Gallery: Wartime Acquisitions.” Burlington Magazine 78, no. 455 (Feb. 1941): 52-55, 57.
About the Blake collections of W. Graham Robertson and Miss A. E. Carthew.
§Ishizuka, Hisao. “Untying the Web of Urizen: William Blake, Nervous Medicine, and the Culture of Feeling.” Liberating Medicine, 1720-1835. Ed. Tristanne Connolly and Steve Clark. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009. The Enlightenment World no. 10. Chapter 7.
*Jakobson, Roman. “On the Verbal Art of William Blake and Other Poet-Painters.” Linguistic Inquiry (1970) <BB #1943> B. 1977. <BBS p. 524> C. §Selected Writings III: Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry. Ed. Stephen Rudy. The Hague: Mouton, 1981. 322-44. D. 1983. <BBS p. 524> E. 1987. <BBS p. 524> F. §Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010 (reprint of 1981).
Jiang, Xian-Jing. “Lun Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke de Shen Hua Ti Xi [On the Mythological System of William Blake].” Wen Yi Yan Jiu [Literature and Art Studies] no. 9 (2011): 45-52. In Chinese.
An interpretation of Blake’s myth in his poems, arguing that “Blake lauds the supreme power of human imagination at the expense of enlightenment and reason as well as of orthodox religion” and that his notion of mythology “reflects the revolutionary trends of his time.”
§Johnson, Kurt A. “Sir William Jones and Representations of Hinduism in British Poetry, 1784-1812.” York [England] PhD, 2010.
The poets dealt with are Jones, Blake, Shelley, and Southey.
§Johnson, Rossiter. “William Blake.” Little Classics: Authors. Vol. 16. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1875. 20-23. <Michigan>
§Jones, Raymond E. “‘Different Moments in the One Cycle’: Alchemical and Blakean Symbolism in Michael Bedard’s Redwork.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 20.1 (spring 1995): 3-8.
§Kamčevski, Danko. “Paradoks u poeziji Viljema Blejka [Paradox in the Poetry of William Blake].” Koraci [Journal of Literature, Art, and Culture] (2010) <Blake (2011)§> B. §Književnost i jezik 57 (2010): 139-45. In Serbian.
§Kang, Ok Sun. “[Reading the Image of Fire in William Blake’s Prophetic Poetry].” [Literature and Religion] 14.3 (2009): 193-212. In Korean.
Keynes, Geoffrey. The Gates of Memory. 1981. <BBS p. 534>
Review
§Ralph Colp,
Biography 9.1 (winter 1986): 89-91.
§Kim, Hee Sun. “[Paradoxical Salvation in Blake’s Late Prophecies: View of Time and Place in Milton and Jerusalem].” [Literature and Religion] 15.3 (2010): 219-45. In Korean.
§Kim, Jae Oh. “[William Blake’s Critique of Nationalism].” [Eighteenth-Century English Literature] 6.2 (2009): 1-26. In Korean.
*Kobayashi, Keiko. “Oe Kenzaburo to Blake (6) 2. Nomi no Yurei: Blake and Kenzaburo Oe (6) 2. The Ghost of a Flea.” Ritsumeikan Bungaku [Ritsumeikan Literature Review] no. 620 (2011): 918-08 [sic]. In Japanese.
§Kobayashi, Victor. “William Blake and ‘Nature has no Outline’: Imagination, Mathematics, Science, and Education.” Imaginative Education Research Group Conference Papers Archive. [?2007].
§Kooistra, Lorraine Janzen. “From Blake to Beardsley: ‘On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry.’” Victorian Poetry 48.1 (spring 2010): 1-9.
Kovel, Joel. “Dark Satanic Mills: William Blake and the Critique of War.” Capitalism Nature Socialism (2010) <Blake (2011)§>
A meditation on the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) with assistance from Blake.
§Lambert, Jérémy. “Blake et le Laocoön: pour une poétique du Mouvement.” Image [&] Narrative: Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative 11.1 (2010): 107-17. In French.
§Lee, Sun Woo. “[Organicism of Blake and Jiyoung].” [Journal of Comparative Literature East and West] 22 (2010): 131-57. In Korean.
§Lester, John W. Criticisms. London: Longman, Brown, & Co.; Cambridge: J. & J. J. Deighton, 1847. 88-89. B. 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged. London: Longman, Brown, and Co.; Cambridge: J. Deighton, 1848. <Bodleian> C. §3rd ed. London: Longman, Brown, & Co., 1853.
“In painting, do we grow weary of … Blake’s terrible and ghastly embodiments …?” (5 [1848 ed.]).
Li, Ling. “Yi Sha Yi Shi Jie, Yi Hua Yi Tian Guo—Bu Lai Ke ‘Tian Zhen de Yu Yan’ Han Yi de Wen Hua Jie Du [‘To See a World in a Grain of Sand, and a Heaven in a Wild Flower’—A Cultural Reading of the Translations of Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’].” Wai Guo Yu Wen [Foreign Languages and Literatures] 26.5 (Oct. 2010): 92-94. In Chinese.
A comment on four Chinese versions of the first stanza of Blake’s poem, claiming that the “paradoxes” there were “seldom known by Western readers.”
Li, Shuang-Chong. “Yun Yong Gong Neng Wen Ti Xue Jie Du ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ (Song of Innocence [sic]) [A Functional Stylistic Approach to ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ (Song of Innocence)].” Wen Xue Jie [Literatures] no. 1 (2011): 72-73, 77. In Chinese.
An analysis of the poem, using a few points from Michael Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics.
Li, Yin-Juan, and Chung-Hong Jiao. “Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge Fan Ying de She Hui Xian Shi [On the Social Reality Reflected in Blake’s Poems].” Da Zhong Wen Yi [Popular Art and Culture] no. 9 (2010): 163. In Chinese.
A brief comment on how some of Blake’s poems reflect the harsh social conditions of the time.
Liang, Xiao-Xi. “Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke he Ta de ‘Lao Hu’ [William Blake and His ‘Tyger’].” Xue Zhou Kan C [Learning Weekly C] no. 9 (2010): 204. In Chinese.
A brief comment on Blake’s poem, suggesting that it is “revolutionary.”
Lio, Jin-Lin, and Qioui-Ying Yu. “Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke de Li Xing Pi Pan yu Wen Ming Fan Si [On William Blake’s Criticism of Reason and Civilization].” Dong Bei Shi Da Xue Bao (Zhe Xue She Hui Ke Xue Ban) [Journal of Northeast Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences edition)] no. 252 (ns no. 4) (2011): 124-27. In Chinese.
A commentary on Blake as “a thinker of civilization,” suggesting that the poet “is aware of all kinds of evil in civilized society but does not mean to get rid of civilization out of prejudice.”
Liu, Bao-An. “Bu Lai Ke Shi ‘Hui Yin Cao Ping’ Zhong Yi Xiang de Xiang Zheng Yi Yi [The Symbolic Meaning of the Imagery in Blake’s ‘The Ecchoing Green’].” Mu Dan Jiang Shi Fan Xue Yuan Xue Bao (Zhe She Ban) [Journal of Mudanjiang Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences edition)] no. 163 (ns no. 3) (2011): 38-40. In Chinese.
An interpretation of the symbolic meanings of the three-stanza structure of “The Ecchoing Green,” which represent “the three stages of man’s growth” and display “the poet’s love for life, nature, and mankind.”
Liu, Bao-An. “Lun Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge zhong de Zong Jiao Wen Hua Qing Xiang [On the Tendency of Religious Culture in Blake’s Poems].” Le Shan Shi Fan Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Leshan Teachers’ Training College] 26.6 (June 2011): 57-59. In Chinese.
An interpretation of the biblical elements in the poems, suggesting that Blake criticizes the restraints by religion on men and in the process creates his own religious system.
Liu, Yan, Ying Zhang, and Shan-Shan Hu. “Qian Xi Bu Lai Ke ‘Lao Hu’ Zhong de Xiang Zheng Yi Yi [An Analysis of the Significance of Imagery in Blake’s ‘Tyger’].” Du Shi Jia Jiao [Home Tutoring in Metropolis] no. 12 (2011): 178. In Chinese.
An explanation of four possible approaches to the reading of “The Tyger”: “imagistic,” “religious,” “political,” and “historical.”
Liu, Yue-Qin. “Qian Xi Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge de She Hui Pi Pan Xing [An Analysis of Social Criticism in William Blake’s Poems].” Kao Shi Zhou Kan [Examination Weekly] no. 37 (2010): 21-22. In Chinese.
A commentary on “Blake’s attack on social problems of his time such as racial discrimination, child workers, religious persecution, and the widening gap between rich and poor.”
§Liu, Yu-mei. “[Holistic Construal of Literary Text: A Case Analysis of William Blake’s ‘London’].” [Foreign Language and Literature] (Feb. 2009). In Chinese.
§Loughnan, Michael. A Grain of Sand in Lambeth. [?2002].
A play set on the day in 1805 when Blake learned that Schiavonetti was to engrave his designs for Blair’s Grave.
Reviews
Reviews have appeared in the Gloucestershire Echo, British Theatre Guide, and by Shirley Dent in Culture Wars.
§Lourenço, Isabel Maria Graça. “The William Blake Archive: da gravura iluminada à edição electrónica.” University of Coimbra PhD, 2009. In Portuguese.
§Lu, Chun-yan. “[Understanding the Theme of William Blake’s Poems].” [Journal of Congqing Institute of Technology] (2005). In Chinese.
§Lussier, Mark. “Blake’s Golgonoosa [sic]: London and/as the Eternal City of Art.” Romanticism and the City. Ed. Larry H. Peer. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. ISBN: 9780230108837. Chapter 11.
Ma, Tao-Ran, and Xiao-Hong Li. “Qian Tan Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke Chuang Zuko zhi Lu [On William Blake’s Path of Creation].” Shi Dai Wen Xue [Literature of the Times] no. 10 (2010): 60. In Chinese.
A biographical sketch of Blake’s creative career.
§Maher, Mickle. There Is a Happiness That Morning Is. [A play, 2011].
Review
Mary Silverstein (see
Blake 45.3, above).
§Mais, S. P. B. “William Blake. An Angelic Anarchist. A Centenary Appreciation.” Daily Telegraph [London] (1927). <BBS p. 557, no journal>
See *Anon., “Blake Remembered after a Century,” above.
Mann, Annika. “The Epidemic of Fellow Feeling in Britain, 1720-1826.” Indiana PhD, 2011. In ProQuest.
She offers “close readings” of Defoe, Smollett, Blake, Barbauld, and Mary Shelley.
§Marks, Cato. “Writings of the Left Hand: William Blake Forges a New Political Aesthetic.” Huntington Library Quarterly 74.1 (March 2011): 43-70.
Writings of the left hand are in prose. “Blake sought to redeem the poet’s [Milton’s] radicalism.”
§Mason, Emma. “Elihu’s Spiritual Sensation: William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job.” The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible. Ed. Michael Lieb, Emma Mason, and Jonathan Roberts; consultant ed. Christopher Rowland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 460-76 (chapter 31).
*Matsushita, Tetsuya. “William Blake no Kanso Gaku: The Physiognomy of William Blake.” Kokugakuin Daigaku Daigakuin Kiyo: Journal of the Graduate School, Kokugakuin University 42 (2011): 221-41. In Japanese.
§*Matthews, Susan. Blake, Sexuality and Bourgeois Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 88. x, 269 pp., 25 reproductions; ISBN: 9780521513579.
Maunder, Andrew, ed. Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. New York: Facts on File–Infobase, 2010.
The Blake entries consist of Brenda Ayres, “London” (246-47), Lynn Lee Ching, “A Poison Tree” (340-41), John H. Jones, “The Clod and the Pebble” (75-76) and “The Shepherd” (408-09), Diane Mason, “The Chimney Sweeper” (from Innocence and Experience) (70-72) and “The Ecchoing Green” (105-06), Melissa Ann Greggs-West, “Holy Thursday” (Innocence and Experience) (181-83), Tara McGann, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (420-26), Jennifer Banach Palladino, “Blake, William (1757-1827)” (34-37), Valeria Pellis, America (7), Sarah Peterson, Visions of the Daughters of Albion (474-76), Andrea Rummel, “The Garden of Love” (149-50), Jon Saklofske, “The Tyger” (466-67), G. R. Taneja, Jerusalem (210-11), “The Little Boy Lost” and “Found” (244-45), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (264-66), Milton (275-76), “Night” (298-99), and “Nurse’s Song” (Innocence and Experience) (305-06), Marilyn Walker, “The Little Black Boy” (244), and Elaine Ward, “The Sick Rose” (412).
§McCord, James. “Mixed Motives and Deadly Acts: Historical and Dramatic Character in William Blake’s King Edward the Third.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 19.4 (summer 1986): 480-501.
§*McDaniel, Douglas. “William Blake in Cyberspace.” Mythville [blog] 12 Feb. 2011.
§McFarland, Alison Sanders. “A Deconstruction of William Blake’s Vision: Vaughan Williams and Job.” Vaughan Williams Essays. Ed. Byron Adams and Robin Wells. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. 29-54 (chapter 3).
Miner, Paul. “An Aspect of Blake’s Double Vision.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 518-20.
In Blake’s design of Christ in the Sepulchre, Guarded by Angels, “Ark-Tomb serves as Ark-Womb.”
Miner, Paul. “Blake and Winckelmann’s ‘Paltry Critick.’” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 535-37.
The “paltry critic” in Winckelmann’s Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, trans. Fuseli (1765), is echoed in Blake’s defence of Fuseli in the Monthly Magazine (1806).
Miner, Paul. “Blake: An Unnoted Iconographic ‘Allusion’ in The Book of Urizen.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 514-16.
Echoes of Paradise Lost, especially in Urizen pl. 25.
Miner, Paul. “Blake: An Unrecognized Allusion to Plato.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).1 (March 2011): 61-63.
Especially about the “Four Mighty Ones” in The Four Zoas, p. 3, and Plato’s Timaeus, trans. Thomas Taylor (1793).
Miner, Paul. “Blake: Findings in ‘A Little Girl Lost.’” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 516-18.
On sexual contexts.
Miner, Paul. “Blake: Milton’s Poverty Tree.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 513-14.
In Jerusalem pl. 98, Blake “intentionally converts Milton’s ‘precious’ Tree of Morality into ‘Albion’s Poverty Tree.’”
Miner, Paul. “Blake: Shame in a Mist.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).1 (March 2011): 59-61.
“Blake’s warping word-play of ‘Shame in a Mist’ [in “then She bore Pale desire”] derives from Milton’s Paradise Lost.”
Miner, Paul. “Blake: The Birth of Los, Echoes from Hervey and Ovid.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 525-26.
“Blake’s iconography of Los as an embryo in The Book of Los subtly revises James Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”
Miner, Paul. “Blake: The Complexity of Allusions.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).1 (March 2011): 63-65.
About Charlemagne.
Miner, Paul. “Blake’s Anti-Lockian ‘Bard.’” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 530-32.
“‘The Voice of the Ancient Bard’ ... specifically rebukes the philosophy of John Locke.”
Miner, Paul. “Blake’s Anti-(Rain)Bow.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 507-09.
In Jerusalem pl. 39, the “puzzling Emblem ... symbolizes a (Rain)Bow that is an anti-Rainbow, a ‘black’ design” which “deliberately contrasts Noah’s Rainbow of Forgiveness with Satan’s (Rain)Bow of Unforgiveness (an anti-Rainbow).”
Miner, Paul. “Blake’s Enemies of Art.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 537-40.
About the Canterbury Pilgrims designs of Blake and Stothard and the deaths of Cromek’s engravers of Stothard’s design.
Miner, Paul. “Blake’s Sexual Furrows and Milton’s ‘Labour’d Ox.’” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 511-13.
“Blake frequently re-defines minutiae from John Milton’s texts.”
Miner, Paul. “Blake’s ‘Swedenborgian’ Fly.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 529-30.
“The Fly” from Songs of Experience “finds part of its philosophical coordinates in Emanuel Swedenborg’s The Divine Love and [Divine] Wisdom.”
Miner, Paul. “The Influence of Milton on Blake’s ‘Night’ of Innocence.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 509-11.
Miner, Paul. “Interpreting Blake’s ‘Auguries.’” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 520-22.
He “attempts to illuminate the meaning and counter-meaning of Blake’s deliberately administrated darkness,” especially in animal contexts. See also Alexander S. Gourlay, “More on Blake’s ‘Auguries,’” above.
Miner, Paul. “New Implications: Blake and James Hervey’s Meditations.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 523-25.
Miner, Paul. “New Vistas: Blake, Swedenborg and Dante.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 527-29.
On astronomical contexts.
Miner, Paul. “Nuances: Blake, Locke and ‘Corporeal Things.’” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 532-33.
In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke says that “had mankind been made but with four senses, … the objects of the fifth sense” would be “far from our [corporeal] notice,” and in No Natural Religion, Blake writes that “From a perception of only 3 senses, … none could deduce a fourth or a fifth.”
Miner, Paul. “Unexplored Latitudes: Blake and Ossian.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).4 (Dec. 2011): 533-35.
“Blake borrowed profusely from Macpherson.”
§Minetti, Francesco. “Sentimentalism and Corporeity of the Image: W. Blake’s Illustrations to E. Young’s Night the Eighth.” Textus 13.1 (2000): 75-92.
§Minetti, Francesco. “William Blake’s Milton and the Renaissance Myth of Hermaphroditus.” Lingue e Linguaggi 5 (2011): 125-32.
§Miyake, Miho. “‘Infant Joy’ by William Blake.” Jissen English Communication 41 (2011): 113-14.
Morgan, Paige. “The Minute Particular in the Immensity of the Internet: What Coleridge, Hartley and Blake Can Teach Us about Digital Editing.” Romanticism (2009) <Blake (2011)§>
“The Four Zoas is too big for the World Wide Web,” but Coleridge’s account in Biographia Literaria (1817) of David Hartley’s law of association in his Observations on Man (1749) “provides an admirable critique of the way that we think about the mechanics of the World Wide Web” (265, 267).
Morris, H[erbert] N[ewall]. “William Blake, Artist and Poet.” New Church Young People’s Magazine (1909) B. “William Blake.” *Flaxman Blake Coleridge and Other Men of Genius Influenced by Swedenborg Together with Flaxman’s Allegory of the “Knight of the Blazing Cross.” 1915. <BB #2248A-B> C. §[Ithaca]: Cornell University Library, 2009. 21 cm., viii, 166 pp.; ISBN: 9781112191053.
§Mounsey, Chris. Understanding the Poetry of William Blake through a Dialectic of Contraries: A Study of the Philosophical Contexts within Which Blake Developed His Ideas. With a foreword by David Fairer. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011. 24 cm., xv, 349 pp.; ISBN: 9780773416055.
It includes five chapters on The Four Zoas.
*Mulhallen, Karen, ed. Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G. E. Bentley Jr. 2010. <Blake (2011)>
Review
§Naomi Ossar,
Kritikon Litterarum 38.3-4 (Nov. 2011): 276-78.
§Muñoz, Adrián. “The Devil’s Party: Milton en la poética de William Blake.” Anuario de Letras Modernas [Mexico] 15 (2010): 63-76. In Spanish.
*Otto, Peter. “Jerusalem.” Multiplying Worlds: Romanticism, Modernity, and the Emergence of Virtual Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 195-214 (chapter 8).
Ozeki, Yasuhiro. “Blake to Kegon Kyo: Blake and the Kegon Sutra.” Takachiho Ronso [Takachiho Journal] 45 (2010): 81-102. In Japanese.
§Paley, Morton D. “William Blake.” The Cambridge Companion to English Poets. Ed. Claude Rawson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 254-70 (chapter 13).
*Parker, Fred. “Blake and the Devil’s Party.” The Devil as Muse: Blake, Byron, and the Adversary. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011. MCI: The Making of the Christian Imagination. xi, 207 pp.; ISBN: 9781602582699. 63-112, 194-98 (chapter 3).
§Pharabod, Hélène. “Livre et espace plastique dans l’oeuvre de William Blake.” Bulletin de la société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 48 (1999): 139-56.
*[Phillips, Michael]. The Illuminated Books of William Blake Re-Created. [2011].
Essentially an advertisement for the sale of separate prints from his facsimile copperplates of America pls. 1-2, 9-13, Europe pls. 1-2, “8(9),” “9(11),” “10(12),” “15(16),” and 17(18),” and Songs, plus planned selections from Marriage and Jerusalem, which “can be printed to order, prices from £25 to £150 each,” some of them on Whatman paper. There are sections on “Making the Plates,” “Printing,” and “Contact and Purchase.” “Plates of the Songs can take to up to 30 minutes or more [sic] to ink and wipe, with the plates of America and Europe taking up [to] two hours,” with up to four impressions without reinking.
§Picón, Daniela. “William Blake: escritura y lectura iluminadas.” Revista chilena de literatura no. 78 (April 2011): 113-38. In Spanish, with an abstract in English.
§Piña, Gerardo. “William Blake, profeta en la Tierra.” Istor: Revista de historia internacional 10, no. 38 (2009): 101-07. In Spanish.
§Potkay, Adam. “Romantic Transformations of the King James Bible: Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake.” The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences. Ed. Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 219-33 (chapter 10).
Potter, Polyxeni. “... a flea / Has smaller fleas that on him prey; / And these have smaller still to bite ’em, / And so proceed ad infinitum.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 16.3 (March 2010): 583-84.
An explication of the cover reproduction of The Ghost of a Flea. The title is from Swift’s “On Poetry: a Rhapsody” (1733). The author is at the Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia.
§Price, Dennis. The Missing Years of Jesus: The Greatest Story Never Told. London: Hay House, 2009. 24 cm., xi, 274 pp.; ISBN: 9781848500334.
Publisher’s blurb: “Do William Blake’s lyrics for the popular hymn ‘Jerusalem’ reveal an extraordinary insight into the so-called ‘missing years of Jesus’ …?”; “Christ did indeed visit Britain.”
*Pyle, Eric Allan. “Chuyo ni Sakaratte: William Blake niyoru Dante Shinkyoku Jigoku hen Dai 2 ka no tameno Soga ni kansuru Kosatsu [Against Taking the Middle Course: On the Illustrations for the Second Canto of the Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy by William Blake].” Geijutsu Kenkyu [Studies of Art] 23 (2010): 15-27. In Japanese.
Quinney, Laura. William Blake on Self and Soul. 2009. <Blake (2010§, 2011)>
The book is about “what Blake said about … the subject’s experience of its own interiority” (xi).
Her “Escape from Repetition: Blake versus Locke and Wordsworth,” Ritual, Routine, and Regime: Repetition in Early Modern British and European Cultures, ed. Lorna Clymer (2006) <Blake (2008)§>, is “the earliest writing I did for this project” (xv).
Reviews
§Nelson Hilton,
Wordsworth Circle 41.4 (autumn 2010): 230-31; §reply by Quinney, 231.
§Mark Crosby,
Review of English Studies 62 (Nov. 2011): 823-25.
*Tristanne Connolly (see
Blake 45.3, above).
*Read, Dennis M. R. H. Cromek, Engraver, Editor, and Entrepreneur. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. 4o, xi, 182 pp.; ISBN: 9780754663997.
This is a careful study of the man variously described by contemporaries as “very energetic and of a lively and cheerful disposition” (Thomas Goff Lupton), “a perfect Brain-sucker” (Walter Scott), of “most gentlemanly manners, and took much in society” (Martha Eastwick), and “a man of the most iniquitous duplicity” (his employee Ralph Rylance), but Read has found the title “that perhaps best fits him: traveling salesman” (19, 135, 20, 145, 155).
Chapter 3 (19-44), “The Grave,” derives in part from Read’s “A New Blake Engraving: Gilchrist and the Cromek Connection,” Blake (1980) <BBS p. 390>; chapter 4 (45-86), “The Canterbury Pilgrims,” from his “The Rival Canterbury Pilgrims of Blake and Cromek: Herculean Figures in the Carpet,” Modern Philology (1988) <BBS p. 619> and “Thomas Stothard’s The Pilgrimage to Canterbury (1806): A Study in Promotion and Popular Taste,” Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of The Canterbury Tales in Pictures, ed. William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum (2003) <Blake (2004), under Stothard in Division II>; chapter 5 (87-106), “The Chalcographic Society,” from his “The Context of Blake’s ‘Public Address’: Cromek and the Chalcographic Society,” Philological Quarterly (1981) <BBS p. 618>; chapter 6 (107-26), “Reliques of Burns,” from his “Practicing ‘The Necessity of Purification’: Cromek, Roscoe, and Reliques of Burns,” Studies in Bibliography 35 (1982): 306-19; and chapter 7 (127-40), “Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song,” from his “Cromek, Cunningham, and Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song: A Case of Literary Duplicity,” Studies in Bibliography 40 (1987): 175-87.
The work was some time in gestation; it was described as “in the press” in BBS pp. 22, 30.
Review
§Karen Junod,
Review of English Studies 63 (April 2012): 337-39.
§Redondo, José. “Nóesis, nous poietikós, póiesis, poesía. Acercamiento, desde la intuición creativa en Plotino, a algunos aspectos del pensamiento poético moderno (Blake, Shelley, el surrealismo, Heidegger y Paz).” Anuario de Filosofía 1 (2007): 109-24. In Spanish.
Ripley, Wayne C. “‘In Great Forwardness’?: 1798 Advertisements for Volume Two of William Blake’s Night Thoughts.” Notes and Queries 256 (ns 58).1 (March 2011): 57-59.
Discovery of advertisements for Blake’s Night Thoughts in the True Briton (31 March 1798) and the Times (9, 11 July 1798) referring to “the Second Part, which is in forwardness” (True Briton) or even “in great forwardness” (Times), though it was never published.
Ripley, Wayne C. “William Blake and the Hunt Circle.” Studies in Romanticism 50.1 (spring 2011): 173-93.
An essay built on [Leigh Hunt’s] “Account of a Familiar Spirit,” Reflector (1811), for which he discovered a reprint in the Analectic Magazine (1814).
*Ripley, Wayne C., and Justin Van Kleeck, eds. Editing and Reading Blake. 2010. <Blake (2011)>
Review
Nelson Hilton (see
Blake 45.3, above).
Rix, Robert. “Magnetic Cure in William Blake’s The French Revolution.” Explicator (2010) <Blake (2011)§>
“Orleans … breath’d on them” (the members of the National Assembly), and they respond as if mesmerized.
Roberts, Jonathan. Blake. Wordsworth. Religion. 2010. <Blake (2011)§>
Mark Knight and Emma Mason. “Series Editors’ Preface.” viii.
Christopher Rowland. “Foreword.” xi.
It is “a study of ‘religion’ in a Blake text [“To my Friend Butts I write”] and in a Wordsworth text [an extract from The Excursion]” (1, 4).
Robinson, Henry Crabb. Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Etc. Ed. Edith J. Morley. 1922, 1932. <BB #2533> C. 1998. <Blake (2002)§> D. §Ithaca: Cornell University Library, 2010.
Rong, Xiao-Ju. “Qian Xi ‘Xiao Hei Hai’ [An Analysis of ‘The Little Black Boy’].” Xue Zhou Kan [Learning Weekly] no. 5 (2011): 194. In Chinese.
A running commentary on Blake’s poem.
§Rovira, James. Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety. 2010. <Blake (2011)§>
It is based on his thesis, “Kierkegaard, Creation Anxiety, and William Blake’s Early Illuminated Books” (2008) <Blake (2009)§>
Review
Kathryn Freeman (see
Blake 45.3, above).
*Rowland, Christopher. Blake and the Bible. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. 4o, xx, 289 pp., 27 “illustrations” (in black and white), 25 “plates” (in color); ISBN: 9780300112603.
A careful account of Blake in a theological context. “Blake deserves to be considered as one of the foremost English biblical interpreters” (xii). The enthusiastic Moravian Church of Blake’s mother is barely mentioned.
The reproductions include all the Job engravings (22) and Enoch drawings (5). There are design-by-design accounts of Job (chapters 2-3 [13-72]) and “The Enoch Drawings” (106-18).
Reviews
Shirley Dent,
Times Literary Supplement 13 May 2011: 26-27 (an “idiosyncratic take” which is “strangely unfulfilling”).
§G. A. Rosso,
Romantic Circles (29 July 2011).
§Rowland, Christopher. “William Blake and Ezekiel’s Merkabah.” After Ezekiel: Essays on the Reception of a Difficult Prophet. Ed. Andrew Mein and Paul M. Joyce. New York: T. & T. Clark–Continuum, 2011. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 535. 229-46 (chapter 13).
Note also his “Ezekiel’s Merkavah in the Work of William Blake and Christian Art,” The Book of Ezekiel and Its Influence, ed. Henk de Jonge and Johannes Tromp (2007) <Blake (2008)§>
Rudd, Margaret E. Divided Image: A Study of William Blake and W. B. Yeats. 1953, 1970. <BB #2585>
Review
§
New Statesman and Nation 45 (1953).
§Ryu, Son-Moo. “William Blake: The Transgression of the Sublime.” [Eighteenth-Century English Literature] 7.1 (2010): 59-94.
Sahm, Danielle. “Contrary to Expectations: Exploring Blake’s Contraries in David Almond’s Skellig.” Children’s Literature (2010) <Blake (2011)§>
“David Almond places Blake at the center of his novel Skellig” (115), particularly with respect to contraries.
§Saklofske, Jon. “NewRadial: Revisualizing the Blake Archive.” Poetess Archive Journal 2.1 (2010).
§Saklofske, Jon. “Remediating William Blake: Unbinding the Network Architectures of Blake’s Songs.” European Romantic Review 22.3 (2011): 381-88.
Sato, Hikari. “Meiji Taisho kino William Blake Shoshi Gakusha tachi—Yanagi Muneyoshi, Jugaku Bunsho, Sangu Makoto: William Blake Bibliographers in Japan in the 1910s and the 1920s—YANAGI Muneyoshi, JUGAKU Bunsho, and SANGU Makoto.” Choiki Bunka Kagaku Kiyo: Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies no. 16 (2011): 107-59. In Japanese.
With a chronological table (123-59) on the reception of Blake in Japan from 1893 to 1929 based on Jugaku’s bibliography (1929) and Sangu’s list (1929) with necessary amendments. (This is an extremely impressive list of 515 publications in Japan, including details of individual Blake poems and designs printed; many of these publications do not appear in G. E. Bentley, Jr., with Keiko Aoyama, Blake Studies in Japan: A Bibliography of Works on William Blake Published in Japan 1893–1993 [1994] <Blake (1995)>).
Yanagi’s William Blake (1914) in Japanese was sent by Yanagi with a manuscript inscription to Sampson (10 Aug. 1915) and by him to Keynes in 1919; this copy is now in Cambridge University Library.
Sato, Hikari. “Naze ‘Entotsu’ wo yakusanakattanoka—Sangu Makoto yaku Blake Senshu to Meiji Taisho kino Blake Rikai: Why Did He Not Translate ‘Chimney’ into Japanese?: The Translation of Blake by Sangu Makoto and the Reception of Blake in Japan in the Early Twentieth Century.” Igirisu Roman ha Kenkyu: Essays in English Romanticism no. 35 (2011): 1-14. In Japanese with an English abstract.
“The Chimney Sweeper” was translated by Sangu as “The Dust Sweeper” in Japanese because traditional Japanese houses did not have chimneys.
Sato, Hikari. “William Blake kara Miki Rofu e—Muku to Keiken no Uta no Hensokyoku: MIKI Rofu Inspired by William Blake—A Variation on Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” Hikaku Bungaku: Journal of Comparative Literature 53 (2010): 7-20. In Japanese with an English abstract (20).
Saunders, John. Cabinet Pictures of English Life. London: Charles Knight & Co., 1845. <Bodleian>
In the courtyard of the Tabard is a “waggon-office,” and
Immediately over this office, in the centre of the gallery, is a picture, said to be by Blake, and ‘well-painted,’*The asterisk refers to a footnote, “*Gentleman’s Magazine, 1812.” See G. E. Bentley, Jr., “Pictura Ignota: Blake’s Most Seen, Least Known Painting,” Descant (2010) <Blake (2011)>. of the Canterbury Pilgrimage, though now so dirty or decayed that the subject itself is hardly discernible. (21)
*Schuchard, Marsha Keith. Why Mrs. Blake Cried: William Blake and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision. 2006. <Blake (2007)>
Review
§Adrián Muñoz,
“La mística erótica de Blake,” Acta Poetica 30.1 (2009): 379-84 (in Spanish).
*Schulz, Max F. “Blake and the Unending Dialectic of Earth and Eden.” Paradise Preserved: Recreations of Eden in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England. 1985. <BBS p. 635> B. §2009 (paperback, print on demand).
§Sha, Richard C. “Blake, Liberation and Medicine.” Liberating Medicine, 1720-1835. Ed. Tristanne Connolly and Steve Clark. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009. The Enlightenment World no. 10. Chapter 6.
Shah, Bhilal A. “Understanding and Sense: Investigating William Blake’s ‘Ah! Sunflower.’” Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal 4.1 (Jan. 2009).
Shan, Jun, and Guang-Ming Kang. “Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke ‘Sao Yan Cong de Xiao Hai’ Yu Xiang Xue Jie Du [A Reading of William Blake’s ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ from the Perspective of Graphetics].” Wen Xue Jie [Literary Circles] no. 3 (2011): 52-53. In Chinese.
An attempt to read “The Chimney Sweeper” from Experience by studying elements of its graphic design such as the use of various punctuation marks and of upper and lower cases and by interpreting what the graphic pattern means. (“Graphetics” seems to be the study of the shape, size, and use of space in writing.)
Shi, Xiao-Jing, and Yuan Xu. “Bu Lai Ke ‘Lun Dun’ de Yi Xiang Fen Xi [An Analysis of the Use of Imagery in Blake’s ‘London’].” Ke Jiao Wen Hui [Essays on Science and Education] no. 5 (2010): 68-69. In Chinese.
A brief comment on Blake’s use of “visual and acoustic imageries” in “London.”
Shin, Eui-sun. [“‘The Real Self-Discovery’ in Poems Text of Eastern and Western: In Wangwei’s, Han yong-woon’s and W. Blake’s” [sic]]. [Chinese Literature Research] 69 (2011): 225-42. In Korean.
§Shin, Na Kyung. [“A Study on the Sublime and Imagination in William Blake’s Painting.”] [Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art] 31 (2010): 337-72. In Korean.
*Shipp, Horace. “William Blake Makes a Minority Report.” The British Masters: A Survey and Guide. [1934]. <BBS p. 633, Blake (2009)>
BBS gives the page numbers as 96-112; “William Blake Makes a Minority Report” is 96-107 and “The Tail of the Comet,” about Blake’s followers Linnell, Calvert, Palmer, and Richmond, is 108-12.
Shu, Hui-Xiang, and Ying Yang. “Shi Lun Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke Bi Xia de He Xie Shi Jie [On the Harmonious World in William Blake’s Writings].” Xian Dai Jiao Ji [Modern Communications] no. 316 (2011): 51, 50.
A comment on the happy harmony among God, men, and all others in the world created by Blake, suggesting that harmony balances innocence and experience in man’s soul.
§Silva, Maurício, and Márcia Moreira Pereira. “Crítica social e história em William Blake e Charles Dickens.” Revista e-scrita: Revista do Curso de Letras da UNIABEU 2.5 (2011): 123-35. In Portuguese.
*Sklar, Susanne M. Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Oxford Theological Monographs. 4o, xvii, 310 pp.; ISBN: 9780199603145.
“Blake’s tantalizing words become comprehensible when they are heard. … Blake’s language and imagery started making sense: the spoken words were transformational” (147).
Stephens, Frederick G. “Some Remarks upon the Life of B. R. Haydon, Historical Painter.” Crayon 3.2 (Feb. 1856): 46-48.
A review of Tom Taylor’s biography of Haydon. “The first great English designer, Blake, was slowly starving, known to few, and still less appreciated than now” (46).
Stephens wrote briefly about Blake in 1867, 1872, and 1875 <BB #2753-54, 1331>, and Herbert Palmer gave Stephens Blake’s set of Aeschylus, Tragedies (1779) on 15 July 1890.
*Storch, Margaret. Sons and Adversaries: Women in William Blake and D. H. Lawrence. 1990. <BBS p. 647>
Review
§Lydia Blanchard,
Modern Fiction Studies 38.2 (summer 1992): 513-14.
§Stroe, Mihai A. “Mistica viziunii în opera profetică a lui William Blake, între Imaginația divină și Rațiunea științifică.” Text și discurs religios 1 (2009): 321-33. In Romanian, with an English abstract.
§Stumpf, Claudia. “Lions of Flaming Fire: The Violence of Meaning in William Blake.” Literary and Poetic Representations of Work and Labor in Europe and Asia during the Romantic Era: Charting a Motif across Boundaries of Culture, Place, and Time. Ed. Christopher R. Clason and Robert F. Anderson. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011.
Su, Fang. “Zhuang Sheng Meng Die yu Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke de Cang Ying zhi Yu [Zhuang Zi’s Butterfly Dream and William Blake’s Metaphorical Fly].” He Tian Shi Fan Zhuan Ke Xue Xiao Xue Bao [Journal of Hetian Normal School] 29, no. 68 (July 2010): 74-75. In Chinese.
A comparison of the differences in the notions of freedom in Zhuang Zi and Blake.
Su, Jing, and Ben-Biao Yao. “Ying Guo Lang Man Zhu Yi Sheng Tai Ge Zhe zhi Qian Qu—Bu Lai Ke [On Blake: An Ecological Pioneer among the English Romantic Poets].” Nei Meng Gu Nong Ye Da Xue Xue Bao (She Hui Ke Xue Ban) [Journal of the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University (Social Sciences edition)] 13, no. 57 [ns no. 3] (2011): 360-61. In Chinese.
A comment on Blake’s ecological ethics in his nature poems; he “is against industrialization,” “longs to return to nature,” and “wishes for a harmonious co-existence shared by humans and animals.”
Sun, Yong-Fang. “Cong ‘Ye Hua’ Yi Xiang Kan Bu Lai Ke Dui Chen Meng Jia Shi Ge de Ying Xiang [The Influence of Blake’s Use of Imagery in ‘The Wild Flower’s Song’ upon the Poems of Meng-Jia Chen].” Anhui Wen Xue [Anhui Journal of Literature] no. 2 (2010): 80-81. In Chinese.
A comment on the use of wildflower imagery in Blake’s “The Wild Flower’s Song” and Meng-Jia Chen’s “A Wild Flower,” suggesting that the Chinese poet was influenced by the British poet.
*Sung, Mei-Ying. William Blake and the Art of Engraving. 2009. <Blake (2010)>
Review
§Alexander Gourlay,
Studies in Romanticism 49.3 (fall 2010): 518-23.
*Suzuki, Masashi. “Reynolds to Blake no Marginalia [Marginalia by Reynolds and Blake].” Albion 56 (2010): 46-73. In Japanese.
Symington, Andrew James. The Beautiful in Nature, Art, and Life. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1857. <Michigan> B. §[Whitefish, Montana]: Kessinger, 2010.
[Mozart’s] wife Constance Weber ... was a very angel of goodness to him. Seldom have artists been so singularly happy in their choice; we are reminded of the perfect sympathies existing between William Blake the painter and his beloved Kate—of John Flaxman the sculptor ....” (2: 57-58).
An unnamed “schoolboy” “would hear Blake’s happy ‘Songs of Innocence,’ or the child piping in Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, ‘as if he would never grow old!’” (2: 130).
According to the index in vol. 2, at 1: 336 is a reference to “Blake, Flaxman, and Stothard,” which I have not seen. Symington was born in 1825.
§Tahvildary, Negin. “Poetry and the Sensitive World: A Comparative Perspective on the Poetic Course of Sohrab Sepehry, Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake.” New Readings 7 (2004).
Sepehry is an Iranian poet.
Tang, Mei-Xiu. “Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke: Wen Huka Bian Yuan de Lǚ Bing Zhe [William Blake: A Culturally Marginalized Rope-Walker].” Changsha Li Gong Da Xue Xue Bao (She Hui Ke Xue Ban) [Journal of Changsha University of Sciences and Technology (Social Sciences edition)] 25.2 (March 2010): 97-101. In Chinese.
An analysis of “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” in terms of “the eastern cognitive aesthetic perspective of heart-object monism.”
§Tatlack, R. R. “Blake as an Artist. His Unique Position.” Daily Telegraph [London] (1927). <BBS p. 657 under Tatlock, no journal or date>
See *Anon., “Blake Remembered after a Century,” above.
§*Tavares, Enéias Farias. “Uma Canção de Liberdade, de William Blake: discurso profético e tradução poética.” Scientia Traductionis [Brazil] 7 (2010): 166-79. In Portuguese.
About “A Song of Liberty” from Marriage.
§Teskey, Gordon. “Milton and the Romantics.” A Companion to Romantic Poetry. Ed. Charles Mahoney. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. 425-42 (chapter 25).
Blake is on 434-38.
§Thomas, Troy. “William Blake and Dead Man.” Adaptation 5.1 (2012): 57-87.
Tian, Qing. “Bu Lai Ke ‘Tyger! Tyger!’ Yi Shi de Wan Mei Dui Chen [The Perfect Symmetry of Blake’s Poem ‘The Tyger’].” Shang Qiu Zhi Ye Ji Shu Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Shangqiu Vocational and Technical College] 10, no. 55 (Aug. 2011): 77-78. In Chinese.
A comment on the “perfect symmetry” in “sound,” “structure,” and “imagery” of “The Tyger.”
§[Tilloch, Alexander]. Star [London, ed. Alexander Tilloch] 29 April 1800.
In the context of a new spate of bank-note forgeries, Tilloch’s proposal of 1797 for a forgery-proof bank note, “which was recommended by almost every eminent artist in the Kingdom,” is summarized, with a list of signatories, including Blake. All the information here derives from Mark Crosby, “Blake and the Banknote Crises of 1797, 1800, and 1818,” under University of Toronto Quarterly, below.
Todd, Ruthven. “Handlist 49: University of Leeds, the Library, MS 470, Blake Letters and Papers of Ruthven Todd.” Digitized June 2004. 56 pp.
Over 300 letters from Bentley, Butlin, Erdman, Essick, Paley, Rosenwald, et al., plus miscellaneous papers, with index.
§Tomlins, Christopher. “Revolutionary Justice in Brecht, Conrad, and Blake.” Law and Literature 21.2 (summer 2009): 185-213.
Tsuchiya, Shigeko. “Urizen no Sho Ko—Blake Shinwa no Shikori: On The Book of Urizen: A Tumor in Blake’s Myth.” Jinbunken Kiyo: Journal of the Institute of Cultural Science, Chuo University 71 (2011): 95-106. In Japanese.
§Tucker, Herbert F. Epic: Britain’s Heroic Muse 1790-1910. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 62-75, 104-15, 169-77, and passim.
University of Toronto Quarterly
Volume 80, number 4 (fall 2011)
Special Issue: The William Blake Project, ed. Karen Mulhallen
The color illustrations in the online version are particularly important for the essays on Milton and Remember Me!
Karen Mulhallen. “The William Blake Project.” 779-85. (“The William Blake Project” consists of
Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G. E. Bentley Jr, ed. Mulhallen [2010]; Blake in Our Time: A Symposium Celebrating the Future of Blake Studies and the Legacy of G. E. Bentley Jr [28 Aug. 2010], orchestrated by Mulhallen; the symposium exhibition and the catalogue called
Remember Me! Blake in Our Time: A Keepsake Book in Celebration of an Exhibition and Symposium on the Life and Art of William Blake (1757-1827) [2010]; and this issue of the
University of Toronto Quarterly.)
*Morton D. Paley. “William Blake’s
Milton/A Poem and the Miltonic Matrix of 1791-1810.” 786-814. (Especially about pictorial representations of Milton and his daughters.)
Mark Crosby. “Blake and the Banknote Crises of 1797, 1800, and 1818.” 815-36. (A densely factual account of the bank-note crisis of 1797 with a new testimonial document signed by Blake, plus unrecorded reuses of it in the new crises of 1800 and 1818.)
Susanne Sklar. “‘In the Mouth of a True Orator’ (
Jerusalem’s Operating Instructions).” 837-57. (Persuasive arguments that
Jerusalem “has been designed to be read aloud” and that the bellicose, ruthless “Hand” in
Jerusalem is far more like the ruthless, bellicose General Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond [1735–1806], who was a magistrate at Blake’s trial for sedition [1804] and who, according to Hayley, was “bitterly prejudiced against Blake” [
BR(2) 183], than he is like the pacific, humanitarian
Leigh Hunt, who has been traditionally associated by scholars with Hand.)Blake was attacked in the Examiner in 1808-09; he attacked the Examiner and the three Hunt brothers who conducted it in his Public Address (Notebook p. 52); there is a three-headed figure on Jerusalem pl. 50; three men with pointing hands on Jerusalem pl. 93 are associated with the accusers of Socrates; articles in the Examiner by the Hunts were often signed with a pointing hand.
Angus Whitehead. “‘humble but respectable’: Recovering the Neighbourhood Surrounding William and Catherine Blake’s Last Residence, No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand, c. 1820-27.” 858-79. (A dense record of who lived in Fountain Court when the Blakes did [1821-27], their ages, births, deaths, marriages, and, often, their occupations, though of course there is scarcely anything of their social intercourse.)
*G. E. Bentley, Jr. “
Remember Me! Customs and Costumes of Blake’s Gift Book.” 880-92. (The 24 known copies of
Remember Me! differ from one another in “the pattern of binding, colour of fore-edges, endpapers, and the decorated sleeve-case”; the “paucity of sales may be related to the fact that the publisher John Poole had little experience of book distribution. His speciality was as a maker of Marble Paper and Fancy Pocket-Books, not in selling them” [880].)
Mary Lynn Johnson. “‘Catalogue of Some of Blake’s Pictures at “The Salterns”’: Captain Butts as Exhibitor, Litigator, and Co-Heir (with His Sister Blanche).” 893-917. (A prolifically factual account of the Butts family and its Blake collections 1863-1905. The essay includes a transcription of the Salterns catalogue [1898] [914-15] and a “Butts Family Genealogical Chart” of “Descendants of Blake’s Patrons, Thomas & Elizabeth Butts” [916-17].)
*Garry Leonard. “‘Without Contraries There is No Progression’: Cinematic Montage and the Relationship of Illustration to Text in William Blake’s
The [First] Book of Urizen.” 918-34. (“I am claiming” that Blake’s “strategy” in his illustrations “is comparable to the cinematic technique of montage” [918].)
Wada, Ayako. “Victoria Cho ni okeru Blake Revival—D. G. Rossetti no Hatashita Yakuwari: D. G. Rossetti’s Contributions to the Victorian Blake Revival.” Tottori Daigaku Kyoiku Center Kiyo: Tottori University Education Center Bulletin 7 (2010): 121-31. In Japanese.
An interesting study but without reference to previous scholarship on the subject.
Wang, Han. “Xiao Hai Shi Cheng Ren de Fu Quin—Lun Qiao Sou yu Bu Lai Ke de Si Xiang Gong Xing he Jiong Yi Xu Shu [The Child Is Father of the Man: On the Thematic Resonance and Narrative Differences between Chaucer and Blake].” Zhangzhou Shi Fan Xue Yuan Xue Bao (Zhe Xue She Hui Ke Xue Ban) [Journal of Zhangzhou Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences edition)] 79.1 (2011): 77-80. In Chinese.
A comparison of the images, structure, and diction in the Canterbury Tales and “The Chimney Sweeper” from Innocence, saying that both authors “highlighted the value of feelings through the same image of ‘child.’”
Wang, Wei. “Tian Zhen zhi Ge yu Jing Yan zhi Ge de Dui Li Tong Yi [Unity of Opposites in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience].” Hubei Di Er Shi Fan Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Hubei University of Education] 28.6 (June 2011): 6-8. In Chinese.
An analysis of “the contrasting settings and characters, images and symbols, and contrary tones and moods,” which are “complementary and necessary to human existence.”
*Wang, Wei-Bin. “Bu Lai Ke de Lun Dun [Blake’s London].” Ying Yu Xue Xi [English Language Learning] no. 11 (2010): 63-65. In Chinese.
A biographical sketch of Blake, especially his London habitats: “28 Broad St, Soho, 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, No. 17 South Molton [Street], and Bunhill Fields” burying ground.
Wang, Xia-Chan. “Gan Shou Can Ku—Cong Xi Ju Feng Ci de Jiao Du Yue Du Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke de Er Tong Shi Ge [Feeling the Cruelty—Reading William Blake’s Poems about Children in Light of Dramatic Irony].” Wen Jiao Zi Liao [Data of Culture and Education] no. 11 (2010): 18-19. In Chinese.
A brief analysis of several instances of dramatic irony in “The Chimney Sweeper” in Songs of Experience.
Wang, Xian-Tao. “Cong Jie Gou Zhu Yi ‘Er Yuan Dui Li’ Jiao Du Fen Xi Bu Lai Ke de Shi Ge [An Analysis of Blake’s Poems from the Binary Opposition of Structuralism].” Qing Nian Wen Xue Jia [Young Writers of Literature] no. 3 (2011): 218. In Chinese.
An attempt to explain the binary opposition shared by Roland Barthes and William Blake.
Wang, Xiao-Juan. “Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke ‘Hu’ de Xiang Zheng Yi Xiang Qian Xi [An Analysis of William Blake’s ‘Tiger’].” Da Jia [Great Masters] no. 8 (2011): 8. In Chinese.
A commentary.
Wang, Xue-Ying. “‘Lao Hu’ de Xiang Si Xing Jie Du [A Reading of the Linguistic Iconicity of ‘The Tyger’].” Chang Jiang Da Xue Xue Bao (She Hui Ke Xue Ban) [Journal of Yangtze University (Social Sciences edition)] 33.2 (April 2010): 128-29. In Chinese.
An attempt to apply Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic theory of trichotomy (representamen, object, and interpretant) to the understanding of Blake’s poem.
Wang, Zheng-Wei. “‘Gao Yang’ yu ‘Lao Hu’: Ye Yuan dao Liang yuan Hua de Yi Wen [From ‘The Lamb’ to ‘The Tyger’: A Query on Blake’s Philosophical Movement from Monism to Dualism].” Wen Jiao Zi Liao [Data of Culture and Education] no. 8 (2010): 24-25. In Chinese.
A brief discussion of how the innocence of “The Lamb” turned into the experience of “The Tyger,” suggesting that “they combine to symbolize the order of things in this world.”
Weng, Chia-Je. “Natural Religion and Its Discontents: Critiques in Blake and Coleridge.” Yale PhD, 2011. In ProQuest.
Whitehead, Angus. “‘I write in South Molton Street, what I both see and hear’: Reconstructing William and Catherine Blake’s Residence and Studio at 17 South Molton Street, Oxford Street.” British Art Journal 11.2 (2010): 62-75.
Richly detailed and valuable.
§*Wilkins, Ernest H. “Blake’s Drawing of Dante’s Celestial Scaleo.” Annual Reports of the Dante Society no. 68-72 (1954): 35-42.
§Williams, Rowan. “‘The human form divine’: Radicalism and Orthodoxy in William Blake.” Radical Christian Voices and Practice: Essays in Honour of Christopher Rowland. Ed. Zoë Bennett and David Gowler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Chapter 9.
Wilson, Eric G. My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011. Muse Books: The Iowa Series in Creativity and Writing. Tall narrow 8o, x, 102 pp.; ISBN: 9781587299902.
On the nature of Blake’s literary creativity and how to write—and how Wilson writes.
*Wright, Julia M. Blake, Nationalism, and the Politics of Alienation. 2004. <Blake (2005)>
Review
§Michael Scrivener,
English Studies in Canada 34.2-3 (June-Sept. 2008): 274-77.
Xie, Nan. “Wen Xue Chang de Zu Zhi Gong Neng Tan Xi: Yi Bu Lai Ke She Ge ‘Lun dun’ Wei Li [The Organizational Function of the Literary Field and Blake’s ‘London’].” Bei Fang Wen Xue [Northern Literature] no. 9 (2010): 23-25. In English, despite the title in Chinese.
An attempt to apply “Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of literary field” to the understanding of Blake’s poem.
Xin, Chao-Wei. “Qian Xi Bu Lai Ke ‘Lao Hu’ zhong de ‘Han Hun’ Mei li [On the Charismatic ‘Ambiguity’ in Blake’s ‘Tyger’].” Anhui Wen Xue [Anhui Journal of Literature] no. 5 (2011): 38-39. In Chinese.
A comment on the multiple significances of the poem conveyed by its ambiguous expressions.
Xu, Yi-Wen. “Ping Ying Shi ‘Lao Hu’ de Liang Pian Yi Wen [On Two Translations of the English Poem ‘The Tyger’].” Shaanxi Jiao Yu (Gao Jiao) [Education in Shaanxi (Higher Education edition)] no. 9 (2011): 23, 27. In Chinese.
A commentary on translations of “The Tyger” by Mo-Ruo Guo and Zhi-Lin Bian, “the best translations in China,” pointing out their weaknesses and concluding that Guo’s version is “spiritually true to the original,” while Bian’s is “literally appealing.”
Xu, Ying-Hong. “Ying Shi ‘Bing Mei Gui’ Shang Xi [An Appreciation of the English Poem ‘The Sick Rose’].” Mao Ming Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Maoming University] 20.2 (April 2010): 34-36. In Chinese.
An analysis of the “prosody, image, and symbolism” in Blake’s poem.
Yang, Yan-Ru. “Bu Lai Ke Bi Xia de Ling Lei Mei Gui [A Reading of Blake’s Unique Roses].” Yichun Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Yichun College] 33.6 (June 2011): 184-85. In Chinese.
A running commentary on the contrast between “The Sick Rose” and “My Pretty Rose Tree,” suggesting that the former implies “the dandy’s debauchery and the maiden’s misery” and the latter hints at “how a dutiful husband resists temptation but is still misunderstood by his wife.”
§*Yoder, R. Paul. The Narrative Structure of William Blake’s Poem Jerusalem: A Revisionist Interpretation. 2010. <Blake (2011)§>
Review
*Molly Anne Rothenberg (see
Blake 45.3, above).
Yorimitsu, Akiyo. “Blake no Shishu Muku to Keiken no Uta ni tsuite [On Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience].” Fumanisumusu [Humanism] 22 (2011): 31-34. In Japanese.
Yotsumoto, Yasuhiro. “Shin Yaku Meishi Sho—Mohitotsu no Shi Sagashi (16) Yorokobi ga Harami, Kanashimi ga Umi Otosu—William Blake hen [A Selection of Newly Translated Poems—Another Exploration for Poetry (16) Joy impregnates. Sorrows bring forth—William Blake].” Gendai Shi Techo [Monthly Report on Modern Poetry] 52 (2009): 113-19. In Japanese.
Zeng, Ling-Fu. “Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge ‘Lao Hu’ de Yong Heng Mei Li yu Qi Yu Yan de Han Hun [On the Linguistic Ambiguity in and Lasting Charm of Blake’s Poem ‘The Tyger’].” Yi Bin Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Yibin University] 10.4 (April 2010): 70-73. In Chinese.
A discussion of how Blake’s “linguistic ambiguity stimulates the reader’s interest and imagination” in “The Tyger.”
Zhang, Jing-Shuang. “Shi Bi Jiao Shi Ge ‘Lun Dun’ yu ‘Wei Si Min Si Te Da Qiao You Gan’ [A Comparison of ‘London’ and ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’].” Ke Jiao Wen Hui [Essays on Science and Education] no. 9 (2010): 71-72. In Chinese.
A comment on the similarities and dissimilarities between the two poems.
Zhang, Min. “‘Lao Hu’ de Gong Neng Wen Ti Xue Fen Xi [An Analysis of ‘The Tyger’ in Terms of Linguistic Function and Literary Style].” Xian Dai Yu Wen [Modern Chinese] no. 2 (2010): 19-22. In Chinese.
Zhang, Qiang, and Zhi-Yong Zhu. “Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge Biao Xian Shou Fa Qian Xi [An Analysis of the Poetic Methods of Blake].” Ming Zuo Xin Shang [Masterpieces Review] no. 6 (2011): 135-36. In Chinese.
A comment on Blake’s use of contrast, repetition, and ambiguity in his poems.
Zhang, Rui. “‘Bing Mei Gui’: San Chong Yi Yun de Er Yuan Dui Li [‘The Sick Rose’: The Binary Opposition within the Triple Implications].” Luoyang Li Gong Xue Yuan Xue Bao [Journal of Luoyang Institute of Science and Technology] 25.5 (Oct. 2010): 27-29. In Chinese.
A reading of the poem; Blake “manifests three binary oppositions: life instinct versus death instinct, sick culture versus free fighter, and the world of innocence versus the world of experience.” “In this imbalance of the binary opposition, the former is destined to be eroded, slaughtered, and replaced by the latter.”
Zheng, Xiao-Dong. “Yin Ying Ban Bo de ‘Tian Zhen’ zhi Jing [Shaded ‘Innocence’—An Analysis of the Multiple Meanings of ‘Innocence’ in Blake’s Songs of Innocence].” Hua Nan Shi Fan Da Xue Xue Bao (She Hui Ke Xue Ban) [Journal of South China Normal University (Social Sciences edition)] no. 3 (June 2010): 88-92. In Chinese.
The essay argues that “Innocence” is a word of “multiple meanings” and that “the poet has a self-contradictory attitude toward ‘Innocence.’”
Zhou, Biao. “Yong Ren Zhi Yin Yu Shi Du Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke de Shi Ge ‘Lao Hu’ [Unscrambling William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ from the Perspective of Metaphor and Cognition].” Nanjing Cai Jing Da Xue Xue Bao [Journal of Nanjing University of Finance and Economics] no. 2 (Feb. 2010): 106-08. In Chinese.
The essay attempts “to interpret the diverse meanings of the word ‘tiger’ from the perspectives of metaphor and cognition.”
Zhou, Li. “Qian Xi Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge de Wen Hua Yi Jing—Kan Wen Hua Shi Ying Xing Yuan Ze zai She Ge Fan Yi zhong de Yun Yong [An Analysis of the Cultural Imagination in Blake’s Poems and the Use of the Principle of Cultural Understanding in Translation of Poems].” Sui Yue [Years] no. 1 (2010): 31, 36. In Chinese.
A brief discussion of the importance of “a translator’s understanding of the original work’s cultural background and significance.”
Zhu, Zhi-Yong. “Bai Tuo Li Xing de Zhi Ku, Hui Gui Xiang Xiang yu Ji Qing—Xiang Xiang zai Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge zhong de Zuo Yong [Get Rid of the Shackles of Reason and Return to Imagination and Passion—The Role of Imagination in Blake’s Poetry].” He Bei Bei Fang Xue Yuan Xue Bao (She Hui Ke Xue Ban) [Journal of Hebei North University (Social Sciences edition)] 26.1 (Feb. 2010): 17-19. In Chinese.
A commentary on “Blake’s supernatural and magnificent imaginative world.”
Zhu, Zhi-Yong, and Xiao-Juan Ning. “Qian Xi Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge de Zhu Ti [A Brief Analysis of the Themes of William Blake’s Poetry].” Da Jia [Great Masters] no. 3 (2010): 228. In Chinese.
A brief comment on the connection between Blake’s themes and the change of times.
Zhu, Zhi-Yong, and Ying-Yan Zhang. “Wei Lian Bu Lai Ke Shi Ge de Xiang Zheng Yi Xiang Qian Xi [An Analysis of Symbolic Imagery in William Blake’s Poems].” Da Jia [Great Masters] no. 9 (2010): 19. In Chinese.
*Zuber, Devin. “Hieroglyphics of Nature: Swedenborg, Ecology and Romantic Aesthetics.” City University of New York PhD, 2010. Full text in ProQuest.
Chapters 4-5 are about Blake and Emerson.
Division II: Blake’s Circle
Barry, James (1741–1806)
Artist
§Bennett, Susan, ed.
Cultivating the Human Faculties: James Barry (1741–1806) and the Society of Arts. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2008. 162 pp.; ISBN: 9780934223966.
Susan Bennett. “Prologue.”
Helen Clifford. “Introduction.”
David G. C. Allan. “James Barry (1741–1806): A Biographical Outline.”
Anne Puetz. “The Society and the ‘Polite Arts’ 1754–1778: ‘best drawings,’ ‘High’ Art and Designs for the Manufactures.”
Martin Myrone. “Patriotism, Virtue, and the Problem of the Hero: The Society’s Promotion of High Art in the 1760s.”
Charlotte Grant. “Arts and Commerce Promoted: ‘female excellence’ and the Society of Arts’ ‘patriotic and truly noble purposes.’”
Andrea MacKean. “Making a Place for Ornament: The Social Spaces of the Society of Arts.”
David G. C. Allan. “
The Olympic Victors: The Third Painting in Barry’s Series,
The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture.”
William L. Pressly. “
Elysium’s Elite: Barry’s Continuing Meditations on the Society of Arts Murals.”
John Manning. “‘This Slip of Copper’: Barry’s Engraved Detail of
Queen Isabella, Las Casas and Magellan.”
William L. Pressly. “A Preparatory Drawing for Barry’s
Glorious Sextumvirate Rediscovered: The Search for the Seventh Man.”
William L. Pressly. “Barry’s Medal for the Society of Arts: A Celebration of the Three Kingdoms.”
David G. C. Allan. “Epilogue: Barry’s Death and Funeral.”
Butts, Elizabeth (c. 1770–1851)
Wife of Thomas, Blake’s patron
“
Mrs. Elizabeth Butts, Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square” subscribed to Guido Sorelli,
Isabella degli Aldobrandi, Tragedia (London: Presso l’autore, 18, Piccadilly; P. Rolandi, Dikes e Cooper, E. Miller, 1838) <Harvard>.
Flaxman, John (1755–1826)
Sculptor, intimate friend of Blake
2003 24 April–14 June
David Bindman, ed.
John Flaxman, 1755–1826, Master of the Purest Line. 2003. <
Blake (2004)§>
The exhibition section of the catalogue includes:
“The Exhibition at the Strang Print Room University College, London: John Flaxman and the Process of Sculpture.” 44-50.
“The Exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum: John Flaxman: The Possibilities of Outline.” 51-60.
“Other Exhibits at University College, London: Display Cases, Flaxman Gallery and Strang Print Room: The Flaxman Gallery from 1847 to the Present Day.” 61-67.
2009 9 April–12 July
§Sylvie Tritz and Hans-Ulrich Kessler.
John Flaxman und die Renaissance: ein Meister des Klassizismus im diolog mit Masaccio und Donatello.
John Flaxman and the Renaissance: A Master of Neo-Classicism in Dialogue with Masaccio and Donatello. Berlin: Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Staatliche Museen, 2009. In German and English. <
Blake (2010)§ (entry for exhibition only)>
§Bonfatti, Rossella. “Palinsesti danteschi di primo Ottocento. ‘L’ Atlante’ di Flaxman nell’ edizione Stella-Pistrucci.” Studi e problemi di critica testuale no. 82 (2011): 115-32. In Italian.
§Brigstocke, Hugh, Eckart Marchand, and Alison Wright. John Flaxman and William Young Ottley in Italy. Wakefield: Produced for Walpole Society by the Charlesworth Group, 2010. Walpole Society no. 72.
Church, Rev. Alfred J. Stories from the Greek Tragedians, with Twenty-Four Illustrations from Designs by Flaxman and Others. London: Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday, 1880. 4o.
I found no indication as to which designs are supposed to be Flaxman’s.
§Petherbridge, Deanna. “Some Thoughts on Flaxman and the Engraved Outlines.” Print Quarterly 28.4 (Dec. 2011): 385-91.
Discusses Flaxman’s engravers Blake, Neagle, Parker, and Piroli.
Fuseli, Henry (1741–1825)
Painter, friend of Blake
Andres, Sophia. “Narrative Challenges to Visual, Gendered Boundaries: Mary Shelley and Henry Fuseli.”
Journal of Narrative Theory 31.3 (2001): 257-82.
Balmanno, Mrs. [Mary]. “Henry Fuseli, Esq., R.A.” Pen and Pencil. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1858. 193-209.
§Baskcomb, Camilla, and Ute Larsen. “Henry Fuseli: Necessity or Frugality? The Artist’s Selection of Drawing Papers.” Journal of the Institute of Conservation 32.1 (2009): 15-29.
§Liberto, F. “Shakespeare, Fuseli, and Problems of Visual Representation in Romantic Culture.” Textus 24.1 (2011): 131-52.
§Patz, Kristine. “Representing Satan/Lucifer as Anthropological and Aesthetic Paradox: Henry Fuseli’s Milton Gallery (1791-1799).” [Southern Arts Journal] (Taiwan) 2 (2011): 187-202.
§Pop, Andrei Octavian. “Neopaganism: Henry Fuseli, Theatre, and the Cultural Politics of Antiquity, 1765-1825.” Harvard PhD, 2010. 398 pp. Full text in ProQuest.
§Pop, Andrei. “Sympathetic Spectators: Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare and Emma Hamilton’s Attitudes.” Art History 34.5 (Nov. 2011): 934-57.
§Smith, Hester Camilla. “Artist as Educator? Assessing the Pedagogic Role of Folly in the Early Work of the Anglo-Swiss Artist Henry Fuseli (1741-1825).” Paedagogica Historica 46.5 (2010): 559-83.
§Smith, Camilla. “Between Fantasy and Angst: Assessing the Subject and Meaning of Henry Fuseli’s Late Pornographic Drawings, 1800-25.” Art History 33.3 (June 2010): 420-47.
§Young, Richard A. “‘Verano,’ de Julio Cortázar, ‘The Nightmare,’ de John Henry Fuseli, y ‘the judicious adoption of figures in art.’” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 17.2 (1993): 373-82. In Spanish.
Hayley, William (1745–1820)
Man of letters and patron
O’Sullivan, Margaret. “For Derby Museums and Art Gallery: [Nine] Letters from Joseph Wright of Derby to William Hayley and William Long, c. 1782-89. Bought for ₤15,000 with the aid of a grant of ₤1,500 from the Friends of the National Libraries.”
Friends of the National Libraries Annual Report for 2010 (2011): 19-23.
The letters, generously transcribed for me by Lucy Salt, keeper of art, Derby Museums and Art Gallery, contain no reference to Blake or to the copy of Poetical Sketches (S) which Flaxman gave Hayley on 26 April 1784.
Palmer, Samuel (1805–81)
Painter and disciple
1987
See 1987 in Part IV.
2004
Samuel Palmer 1805-1881 Visions of Landscape: Robin Tanner 1904-1988. London: Fine Art Society, 2004. 4
o.
18 exhibits, 10 by Palmer.
§Attlee, James. “Extollagers in the Valley of Vision. Memory, Moonlight, and Samuel Palmer.” Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 56-66.
§Barringer, Tim. “‘I am a native, rooted here’: Benjamin Britten, Samuel Palmer and the Neo-Romantic Pastoral.” Art History 34.1 (Feb. 2011): 126-65.
Campbell-Johnston, Rachel. Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. 400 pp.; ISBN: 9780747595878.
Review
Lisa Hilton, “Beneficent Light,”
Times Literary Supplement 12 Aug. 2011: 30 (correction by Paul Goldman, “Samuel Palmer,”
Times Literary Supplement 19 and 26 Aug. 2011: 6).
§Sauvignon, Karine. “Le Point du jour, par Samuel Palmer.” L’Estampille/L’Object d’Art no. 452 (2009): 21-22.
Parker, James (1757–1805)
Engraver, Blake’s partner in a print shop (1784–85)
Anon. “Monthly Retrospect of the Fine Arts.” Monthly Magazine 14, no. 6 (1 Jan. 1803): 530-32.
Sir William Beechey painted a very characteriſtic and ſpirited portrait of the preſent Chancellor of the Exchequer, which … is now engraving in ſtroke, in a very capital ſtyle, by Mr. James Parker, for Meſſrs. Boydell, and will be publiſhed in about four or five weeks. (531)In G. E. Bentley, Jr., “The Journeyman and the Genius: James Parker and His Partner William Blake with a List of Parker’s Engravings,” Studies in Bibliography 49 (1996): 226, this is listed under 1800. The subject is the Right Hon. Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, prime minister 1801-04.
Anon. “Proceedings of Learned Societies, Societies of the Arts, etc.” Philosophical Magazine 16 (1803): 175-84.
A section on the “Chalcographic Society, London” (177-78) includes a list of officers and committee members, including “James Parker, esq.”
Bentley, G. E., Jr. “The Journeyman and the Genius: James Parker and His Partner William Blake with a List of Parker’s Engravings.” Studies in Bibliography 49 (1996): 208-31.
Robert N. Essick has discovered the following engravings by Parker not recorded in Bentley:
“Fainasollis, Borbar & Fingal” (1809) <Bentley records only Boydell, 1783>
Akenside, Mark, Pleasures of Imagination (1806, 1810) <Bentley records only 1795, 1796, 1803>
Armstrong, John, The Art of Preserving Health (1796) <Bentley records only 1795>
Collins, William, Poetical Works (Sharpe, 1804) <Bentley records only 1792, 1802>
Falconer, William, The Shipwreck (1802, 1806, 1811) <Bentley records only 1796, 1800>
Lodge, Edmund, Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, 12 vols. (1823-35), 4 pls. <NB: Parker died in 1805>
Macneil, Hector, Poetical Works, 2 vols. (1802)
Pope, Alexander, An Essay on Man (1796)
Robertson, William, History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI, 3 vols. (1797)
Rogers, Samuel, The Pleasures of Memory (1803) <Bentley records only 1801, 1802, 1806>
Shakespeare, William, Plays, 12 vols. (1807)
Bryan, Michael. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. New ed. Vol. 1. London: George Bell and Sons, 1886.
Richard Golding (b. 1785) was transferred as an apprentice in 1804 from [John] Pass [of 4 Chapel Street, Pentonville, fl. 1799-1805] to James Parker (581).There is no appropriate Golding or Pass in Stationers’ Company Apprentices 1701-1800, ed. D. F. McKenzie (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1978); details of Pass come from Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775-1800: A Preliminary Checklist of Members (Folkestone: Dawson, 1977).
Stedman, John Gabriel (1744–97)
Soldier of fortune
§*Kim, Eun Ryung. “[A Travel Writing as Cultural Translation: Focusing on Stedman’s
Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition].” [
English Language and Literature Studies] 51.4 (2009): 157-173. In Korean.
Stedman’s “text … is a representation itself of cultural hybridity of contact zone.”
Senior, Emily. “‘Perfectly Whole’: Skin and Text in John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam.” Eighteenth-Century Studies (2010) <Blake (2011)§>
A meticulous medical record.
Stothard, Thomas (1755–1834)
Painter, early friend of Blake
§Allen, Regulus. “‘The Sable Venus’ and Desire for the Undesirable.”
Studies in English Literature 51.3 (summer 2011): 667-91.
About Stothard’s engraved design.
Balmanno, Mrs. [Mary]. “Thomas Stothard, Esq., R.A.” Pen and Pencil. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1858. 182-89.
Kimber, Mr. The Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson. A Narrative Founded on Fact. London: Harrison and Co., 1783. <Victoria University in the University of Toronto>
There are 5 prints after Stothard’s designs. The format is that of Harrison’s Novelist’s Magazine.
§Wyon, L. C. A bronze medal (5.7 cm. in diameter) representing Stothard, with his Canterbury Pilgrims design on the reverse, was designed by L. C. Wyon for the Art Union of London (1880) (British Historical Medals: BHM 3080).
Tatham, Frederick (1805–78)
Sculptor and disciple
Anon.
Standard 22 July 1878.
“July 13, after a short illness, at 45, Oak Village, N.W., Frederick Tatham, aged 73, eldest son of the late C. Heathcote Tatham.”
§Curtis, Henry. “Frederick Tatham’s Wife.” Notes and Queries 153 (1927): 9.
“Can any reader supply the dates of marriage and death, as also the parentage and maiden name of the wife of Frederick Tatham …?” None did so in Notes and Queries.