Publications

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the opening of a new wing of the Archive: a digital exhibition space that allows for curated presentations of selected works and/or special topics dealing with Blake’s oeuvre. Archive Exhibitions can be accessed through the drop-down at the upper right of the Archive’s home page. 

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of digital editions of Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion Copy A, from the British Museum, and Copy I, from the Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. In addition to these two copies, the Archive is publishing thirty-one miscellaneous impressions of Jerusalem.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of forty-three pencil drawings produced by Blake during his first decade as an independent artist, 1779-1790.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of Blake’s Notebook, based on fresh digital photography from the British Library and presented in Preview mode—with enlargements and basic bibliographical information but without transcriptions. Usually works in Preview mode lack illustration descriptions as well, but in this case the minutely detailed descriptions for each illustration in the Notebook are available and fully searchable.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of Blake’s The First Book of Urizen Copy J. This copy was acquired at an unknown time, probably in the nineteenth century, by the Royal Library, Vienna, and transferred in 1903 to the Albertina Museum, Vienna. However, it was not known to students of Blake until near the end of the twentieth century when the German Blake scholar and art historian Detlef Dörrbecker rediscovered it. This is the first time Copy J has been edited and reproduced in true-size, high-resolution images.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures, Poetical and Historical Inventions, Painted by William Blake, in Water Colours, Being the Ancient Method of Fresco Painting Restored: and [water color] Drawings, For Public Inspection, and for Sale by Private Contract. Printed by a job printer in a small run, perhaps fewer than one hundred copies, the catalogue accompanied his self-organized one-man exhibition of 1809-10. It hung in the rooms above his brother’s haberdashery shop in Soho—Blake’s childhood home. The price of the catalogue included admission to the exhibition.

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The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion Copy R from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; colored impressions of Visions Plates 1, 2, and 3 (Copy mpi) from the Morgan Library and Museum; a proof of Visions Plate 6 from the Fitzwilliam Museum that belongs to our previously published Visions Copy a; and five monochrome wash drawings for the wood engravings in Thornton’s Virgil added to the seven previously published designs.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of Blake’s VALA, or The Four Zoas. This edition is based on fresh digital photography from the British Library and is presented in Preview mode—with enlargements and basic bibliographical information but without transcriptions or illustration descriptions.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of Blake’s water color drawings illustrating Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts. These 537 designs are a considerable proportion of Blake’s total production as a visual artist. The water colors join two copies of Blake’s engraved illustrations to Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1797) previously published in the Archive, one uncolored and one with contemporary hand coloring.