Publications

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.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to launch the virtual Lightbox, a major addition to the Archive’s array of digital tools. It replaces an earlier version discontinued in 2013 because of security issues. This entirely new Lightbox has been specially developed for the Archive by Tae Lerch of UNC’s Office of Arts & Sciences Information Services and Michael Fox, the Archive’s assistant editor, who has also implemented many new features in our Reading View and significant improvements to the Archive’s server and to its back end and interface. Together, these new tools and enhancements amount to a relaunching of the Blake Archive.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of digital editions of the manuscript and the designs for Blake’s Tiriel.

The Manuscript. Tiriel (c. 1789) comprises a manuscript of fifteen pages of eight numbered sections plus three sketches and twelve known finished drawings (three untraced since 1863). Most of the drawings are more or less clearly related to passages in the manuscript. Originally, Blake may have planned to engrave the writing and the illustrations or a selection of them and assemble the two in a set sequence—with or without a publisher. Alternatively, he may have envisioned a typographic work with engraved illustrations. But he never saw the project through to completion, and the materials are now dispersed.

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion Copy F, from the Morgan Library and Museum. Jerusalem is Blake’s masterpiece in illuminated printing, consisting of 100 relief and white-line etchings divided into four chapters. It is his longest illuminated book and its plates are among his largest, at approximately 22.5 x 16 cm. Though dated 1804 on its title plate, it was not printed in its entirety until c. 1820. Sixty plates may have been completed by 1807; a few examples were exhibited in 1812. The printing of 1820 produced Copies A, C, and D. In the next year, Blake printed Copies B (chapter 1 only, Plates 1-25) and E. Blake printed Copy F in 1827. Copies H-J are posthumous. Most lifetime copies have hand tinting in gray or black, but only Copies B and E are colored. There are two arrangements of the plates in chapter 2, early (Copies A and C) and late (Copies D and E).