Blake Quarterly

At the end of October the Blake Archive added forty-five back issues of the Blake Quarterly to the digital archive of the journal (I wrote about the creation of this wing of the Blake Archive here). Now every issue from spring 1990 (vol. 23, no. 4) to our five-year subscription paywall is freely accessible in both HTML and PDF, with the original black-and-white images replaced where possible in the HTML versions with color images from the archive. This new batch of issues includes frequently requested articles such as Marsha Keith Schuchard’s “The Secret Masonic History of Blake’s Swedenborg Society.”

The Blake Quarterly published its spring issue recently. It includes our annual “Blake in the Marketplace” feature by Robert N. Essick (who’s also one of the editors of the Blake Archive). “Marketplace” is always hefty on details but light in tone; there are lots of illustrations and the illustration captions, often in the form of mini-essays, are legendary. Elsewhere in the issue, Paul Miner explores Blake’s attitude to royalty (George III, Charlotte, and Marie Antoinette) and Jeff Mertz reviews Karl Kroeber’s Blake in a Post-Secular Era: Early Prophecies, written at the end of his life and brought to fruition by his former student Joseph Viscomi. Lastly, Joseph Wittreich uses two recently published books about William Hayley (one a collection of essays and the other a selection of his poetry) to discuss not only Hayley but also the reception history of Milton.

The Blake Quarterly site is www.blakequarterly.org.

Sometimes we hear of worthy projects for which funds are being raised, such as the Blake Society’s initiative to purchase Blake’s cottage in Felpham. Another, on a slightly smaller scale, came to our attention recently. The following is excerpted from the original message:

My name is Gaelen Armstrong – I’m a Canadian metal artist currently residing in the US. My collaborator and I are admirers of William Blake, and we’re designing a project for reproducing Blake’s Ancient of Days as large copper bas reliefs.

Our Ancient of Days will be roughly 2′ x 4′ (x 3.5″, at its greatest depth), and will be pure copper. We’ll finish them with our handmade patinas and a variety of gold, silver, and brass brushplating. Each piece will be unique and substantial. We’ve made over 150 pieces of copper art together, and we’re excited to take on Blake’s masterpiece.

We’ve created a Kickstarter campaign to cover the last few materials needed to bring the project to fruition. Though there are a variety of rewards for smaller pledges, those who pledge $1500 or more will receive their own 2′ x 4′ relief of the Ancient of Days.

As a side note, pledges on Kickstarter are noted but no funds change hands unless the project meets its funding goal by the campaign’s deadline. (So there’s no risk of supporting a project that only gets partial funding, and therefore remains unfulfilled.)

The link for the campaign is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/350052336/william-blakes-ancient-of-days-in-copper-silver-an. It runs until 8 May 2015.