Hell’s Printing Press

A Brief History of Blake Camp

11 August 2014

“Blake Boyz” and “Blake Camp” are sticky labels that John Unsworth invented in the early years of the Archive. This June Blake Camp celebrated its 21^st birthday—or maybe its 19^th or 20^th, depending on how you count, because the label came a bit later than the annual gathering of the principal participants.

To understand what Blake Camp—the annual pivot point for our project—is and how it got that way, a little history is helpful.

XML

By the Book: Catching Up with the XML Tag Set

6 August 2014

This is not a call for reform. This is not an admission of guilt.

Moving deeper into Blake’s typographic works for the Archive has presented a number of new encoding questions, particularly with how to handle potentially “secondary” text on the page, like printer’s marks, catchwords, page numbers, titles, etc.

Publications

Publication Announcement – Thel Copy N and Enoch Walked with God

25 July 2014

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of an electronic edition of The Book of Thel Copy N and Enoch Walked with God, both in the Cincinnati Art Museum. We have also republished Songs of Innocence Copy U with a more authoritative arrangement of the plates and an enhanced Copy Information page.

BAND

Introducing: Blake’s French Revolution

23 July 2014

A couple of us at the Blake Archive have taken on Blake’s 1791 poem French Revolution as a new typographic project. We use many of the same principles established in early publications of typographic works. Thus, after working out some important typographic questions on the Descriptive Catalog, the French Revolution transcription appears to be fairly straightforward.

BAND, XML

Typographical Headaches

16 July 2014

The project that I am currently working on for the William Blake Archive is the Descriptive Catalogue of Blake’s work for his exhibition in Soho in 1809. This is a new experience for me, because it is my first time working on a typographical work instead of a manuscript. With new experiences come new challenges, and new headaches!

BAND

Blake and I (and the Red Dragon)

9 July 2014

By Margaret Speer

A couple of weeks ago, in a carpe diem moment of this, my last summer as an undergraduate bum, I found myself in the wonder emporium of my cousin’s basement. My cousin and her friends suggested we watch the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, which is an old family favorite. I had never seen the film in question. In fact, I didn’t even really know there was a prequel. There is, though, and it’s called Red Dragon.

BAND

On This Day: 2 July

2 July 2014

I’ve always been a fan of those “On This Day” features you often see in newspapers and now online. This is probably picked up from my Dad who has a wonderful memory for dates and can usually be relied upon to find and remember the most random coincidences (for example, did you know that Kublai Khan and Bruce Springsteen share a birthday?). As we get ready for 4 July celebrations here in the US, I thought I’d spend this post thinking about today, a less remembered date but significant in its own way.

So here we go: On This Day, 2 July, the Battle of Marston Moor was fought, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean, a UFO crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, and Hermann Hesse celebrated his birthday. Also on 2 July (note that seamless transition), Blake wrote a letter to his patron and friend, George Cumberland.

BAND

Blake and His Far-Out Travels

25 June 2014

It’s summer. Offices are empty; others are under construction. Many of us have been called away on summer business or have fled to more exotic locales. I’m on the road myself, typing from a very fine bagel shop in Ithaca, NY.

I like to travel. I really like bagels.

Unfortunately, an adventurous cosmopolitan spirit and dedication to the most hole-y of rolls doesn’t offer a lot of traction with our man Blake. Readers who are even somewhat familiar with Blake’s biography know that he didn’t exactly “get out” much. Except for a few years spent near the shore in Felpham (way down in West Sussex), Blake never really left London. (Also no evidence that he ever got hold of a really good bagel.)

But perusing the Archive, we know that Blake did appreciate travel. Only, his travel was more the internal, “like, far-out, man,” kind of movement.

BAND

“find Thee a friend”: Blake, Thomas Butts, and Patronage

18 June 2014

In the past month, I’ve transitioned from working on Blake’s letters and begun transcribing and building the BAD for “The Phoenix,” a newly discovered work by Blake whose provenance is (most conveniently) recorded in Bentley’s Blake Books supplement, one of BAND’s go-to reference works. Written in various shades of colored ink (and in a careful, vastly neater hand than Blake’s normal handwriting), “The Phoenix” is a brief, charming piece of verse dedicated to Mrs. Elizabeth Butts, wife of Thomas Butts, a clerk in the office of Britain’s Commissionary General of Musters and one of Blake’s main patrons from the years 1794-1806.

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Remembering Morris

"Then patient wait a little while": Blake Comes to the Getty

A Conversation with Helen Bruder

Antipodean Blake

A Brief History of Blake Camp

By the Book: Catching Up with the XML Tag Set

Publication Announcement – Thel Copy N and Enoch Walked with God

Introducing: Blake’s French Revolution

Typographical Headaches

Blake and I (and the Red Dragon)

On This Day: 2 July

Blake and His Far-Out Travels

“find Thee a friend”: Blake, Thomas Butts, and Patronage