The cover of our spring 2023 issue (vol. 56, no. 4) features a map of Australia, with the states and largest territory represented by details of works by Blake. The puzzle is to discover the link between the image and the state/territory in each case.
Western Australia
One of the place names on plate 16 of Jerusalem is Perth. I positioned the word near the location of the capital of Western Australia, which is named after the city in Scotland that Blake lists.
South Australia
Here the connection is to the point of the compass. In the diagram of the four zoas on plate 32 of Milton, the letter “S” indicates the position of Urizen.
Tasmania
I excerpted the word “Thomas” from Blake’s engraving of Thomas Hayley for William Hayley’s An Essay on Sculpture. In its new context, it’s intended to point to Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, transported as a convict to Hobart in 1837. He had owned copies of several of Blake’s illuminated books.
Victoria
This detail from Dante Running from the Three Beasts represents the thirty-six watercolors from the Dante set that are the best-known Blake holdings of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
New South Wales
This is the one state where choosing an image didn’t require some mental gymnastics. The detail is from the imprint of “A Family of New South Wales,” Blake’s engraving for John Hunter’s An Historical Journal.
Queensland
Blake penned a dedication “To the Queen” for The Grave. His queen was Charlotte; Queensland is named after Queen Victoria. While it’s easy to find images of the Grave engravings, I had much greater difficulty locating the typeset dedication; my thanks to John Windle for helping me out.
Northern Territory
The capital of the Northern Territory is Darwin, after Charles. Cue one of Blake’s plates for Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden—”Tornado.”
Last but not least, no map is complete without a gratuitous sea monster, for which I borrowed Leviathan from the illustrations for Job. By happy coincidence, a Leviathan wooden rollercoaster recently opened at Sea World on Queensland’s Gold Coast. All of which goes to show that you can connect anything to anything if you try hard enough!