The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital exhibition on William Blake’s Biblical Illustrations. It joins the previously published installments in this wing: William Blake’s Canterbury Pilgrims, Biography, and Illuminated Printing. Exhibitions can be accessed through the drop-down at the upper right of the Archive’s home page.
Continue readingThe Blake Archive’s April 2021 publication is an exhibition on Blake’s biblical illustrations. This is the story of how it came to be.
Continue readingToday sees the publication of vol. 54, no. 4 (spring 2021). It will be open access until the end of April.
Continue readingRecently, while looking for inspiration for a poetry assignment, I revisited one of my favorite poems, Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra.” I always loved this poem for its energy and relentless optimism. After arriving at a dock and sitting “under the huge shade of a Southern/Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the/box house hills and cry,” Ginsberg sees a dead sunflower and goes into a fit of emotions, ending with the cheery declaration, “we’re all beautiful golden sunflowers inside.” But this journey is not easy. Before Ginsberg’s uplifting conclusion, we’re first taken through a sort of microcosm of the industrial wasteland that is America:
Continue readingBlake’s earliest work, Poetical Sketches, is printed in a typographically traditional way, which made reproducing a digital edition of Sketches a little anomalous. Noting and describing Blake’s handwritten emendations and other printing errors initiated questions that went beyond typical Archive standards.
Continue readingThe utter exhaustion of our current circumstances is sticky and rotten. With few reasons to celebrate I have found more reasons than imaginable to sit down and relax with a glass of wine.
Continue readingThe William Blake Archive is pleased to launch Works in Preview, a new wing presenting designs that are among Blake’s largest and most complex. Instead of waiting until the details of the designs are fully encoded—which makes them more fully searchable but can take years to complete—the Archive is presenting the designs in an environment that enables viewers to enlarge them many times their true size to reveal details not previously visible in any reproductions.
Continue readingRecently I saw a message from university advancement that mentioned a “gift burst,” whereupon I resolved to label our next publication announcement an issue burst. I’m imagining celebratory confetti fluttering down as we release our winter issue (vol. 54, no. 3) online today. As ever, it will be open access until the end of the month.
Continue readingThe William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a digital edition of Poetical Sketches, composed by Blake between c. 1769 and 1777.
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