The archive has just published Jerusalem (F), printed in 1827 and now owned by the Morgan Library and Museum. Copy E (Yale Center for British Art), the sole representative of the work in the archive for more than a dozen years, now has company.
Jerusalem copy F, detail of pl. 46
None of the articles that the Blake Quarterly has published over the years promises, much less contains, everything about Jerusalem; you’re more likely to come across a title like “The Bird-Man of William Blake’s Jerusalem.” Here, however, are a few pieces that I’ve chosen to illustrate aspects of the poem and its reception.
The archive’s publication announcement for copy F refers to the order of the plates in chapter 2 in early (A and C) and late (D and E) copies; the archive’s ordering of copy F reflects Blake’s intentions (the late order) rather than the subsequent numbering by John Linnell, probably based on his own copy C (the early order). In our spring 1983 issue, V. A. De Luca discusses “The Changing Order of Plates in Jerusalem, Chapter II” and Blake’s possible motives for rearranging the chapter.
Book reviews are often a good way for me to gain insight into the knotty problems that occupy Blakeans. Molly Anne Rothenberg’s review of Paul Yoder, The Narrative Structure of William Blake’s Poem Jerusalem: A Revisionist Interpretation, and De Luca’s review of Morton Paley, The Continuing City: William Blake’s Jerusalem, both lay out some of the issues (e.g., does Jerusalem have a narrative structure? what’s the significance of the chariot design on pl. 46?) in the course of discussing the books.
Eliza Borkowska deals with the challenges of translation in her “Translating Blake’s Jerusalem into Polish” (summer 2012). More recently, she has published a chapter on the subject in Translating Myth, ed. Ben Pestell, Pietra Palazzolo, and Leon Burnett (2016).
For Susanne Sklar, Jerusalem is not just text and images but also a work to be read aloud. Our winter 2004-05 issue contains her description of a reading that she organized in November 2004, the aptly named “Jerusalem Marathon.” Coincidentally, there’ll be another reading facilitated by Susanne and sponsored by the Blake Society in November 2017 in London: see the society’s events page.