The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of an electronic edition of Songs of Innocence Copy L in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. Innocence is dated 1789 by Blake on the title page, and Copy L, never before reproduced, was one of fourteen copies printed that year in the same press run.
Continue readingThe start of a new semester is usually a good time for research groups to take a quick intellectual inventory of the previous months’ accomplishments and to plan ahead for future work. At our first BAND meeting of the spring semester last week, we spent a chunk of time talking about finishing up a new, big batch of letters for publication, as well as looking ahead to see what projects people might move to after the letters are done.
Obviously, from an organizational level, looking ahead is smart in order to prevent any lulls in productivity. But what about personal goals? Student research assistants contribute to ongoing projects, but how can projects contribute to students?
Continue readingHere at BAND, we’re deep into proofreading a batch of Blake’s letters that are currently being prepared for publication. The large amount of different objects (over thirty letters) means that everyone on the team has been involved in the process and so we have been recording any questions and discrepancies that we note on a shared Google doc. As I discussed in a post a few weeks ago, the term “proofreading” at BAND means a lot more that the word usually suggests, and this current project provides some good working examples of this part of the process.
Continue readingBy Margaret Speer
As one of the two undergraduate assistants to the Blake Archive at the University of Rochester (BAND), my main activities are:
In her last post about proofing, Laura briefly mentioned the work that we do with the standard references. These are standard print editions of Blake’s work whose transcriptions we regularly reference in our work on manuscripts. Any time there is a discrepancy between our reading of a text and the way the text has been read by one of these editors in the past (unless it is a punctuation difference) we note it in our editorial notes.
Continue readingThe unsung hero of the editing process is proofreading. Here at the Blake Archive, what we call “proofreading” has to take into account the disparate, interactive nature of the multimedia editions we publish. As a result, our interpretation of the term consists of a range of activities that are more varied than those conventionally involved in proofreading.
Continue readingBy Lisa Vandenbossche
In August I took over a project that Esther Arnold, a recent PhD recipient in the English Department, had started. The project is an illustrated manuscript of the King James translation of the book of Genesis. This manuscript was probably started in the last year of Blake’s life and left unfinished upon his death.
Continue readingThe exciting recent publication of Blake’s illustrations of works by William Hayley helps to present a much fuller picture of the period from about 1800-1805 in Blake’s career, which included his conflicted personal and professional associations with Hayley, his only extended sojourn outside of London to a cottage in Felpham, and the episode of his trial for sedition. During this time, Blake’s personal, social, aesthetic, and professional interests intersect through his extensive work for Hayley and in the correspondence though which they planned and discussed these illustrations. At the moment, we are preparing a second installment of letters that will help to augment the resources available within the Archive for exploring this fascinating period in Blake’s life. We are pleased to be able to make these materials available in multiple ways for users, who we hope will benefit from the multiple ways we have prepared for them to search and browse Blake’s works and papers in the Archive.
Continue readingThe William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of electronic editions of Blake’s illustrations to works by William Hayley, including his Essay on Sculpture, the broadside ballad Little Tom the Sailor, The Triumphs of Temper, The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper, and The Life of George Romney. We are also republishing Blake’s etched and engraved illustrations to Designs to a Series of Ballads, Written by William Hayley (1802) and Hayley’s Ballads (1805). The designs and engraved texts of both sets of Ballads illustrations, as well as the new material now being published, are fully searchable.
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