Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly

Transcripción

AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY
I
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Publications and Discoveries in 2002:
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Reports
VOLUME 37
NUMBER 1
SUMMER 2003
£%Lke
AN I L L U S T R A T E D
QUARTERLY
www.blakequarterly.org
SUMMER 2003
NUMBER 1
VOLUME 37
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Article
Reviews
William Blake and His Circle:
A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2002
By G. E. Bentley, Jr.
K. E. Smith, An Analysis of William Blake's
Early Writings and Designs to 1790,
Including Songs of Innocence
Reviewed by Nelson Hilton
36
Minute Particulars
Christopher Z. Hobson, Blake and Homosexuality
Reviewed by Margaret Starch
38
Muir's Facsimiles and the Missing Visions
By David Duff
32
"Man on a Drinking Horse"
A Print by Thomas Butts, Jr.
By Alexander S. Gourlay
35
A D V I S O R Y
G. E. Bentley, Jr., University of Toronto, retired
Martin Butlin, London
Detlef W. Dorrbecker, University of Trier
Robert N. Essick, University of California, Riverside
Angela Esterhammer, University of Western Ontario
B O A R D
Nelson Hilton, University of Georgia
Anne K. Mellor, University of California, Los Angeles
Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
David Worrall, St. Mary's College
C O N T R I B U T O R S
G. E. BENTLEY, JR., writes about Blake's life and his books.
The second edition of his Blake Records (1969), incorporating Blake Records Supplement (1988) and much added
matter, and a slightly revised paperback edition of his The
Stranger from Paradise are to be published by Yale in the
spring of 2003.
DAVID DUFF teaches English at the University of Aberdeen.
Author of Romance and Revolution: Shelley and the Politics
of a Genre (1994), he is currently completing a book on
Romantic genre theory.
ALEXANDER GOURLAY is shamelessly plugging the collection
he edited—Prophetic Character: Essays on William Blake in
Honor of John E. Grant (Locust Hill Press, 2002), thirteen
new studies of the art and poetry by a diverse group of
scholars. He teaches at Rhode Island School of Design.
NELSON HILTON appears as co-author with Jonathan Arnold
of "Revelations from a bread mould," a "News and Views"
item in Nature, vol. 422 (24 April 2003).
MARGARET STORCH is the author of Sons and Adversaries:
Women in William Blake and D. H. Lawrence (University of
Tennessee Press, 1990). She has published in journals such
as Modern Language Quarterly, American Imago and D. H.
Lawrence Review, and regularly contributes reviews to Modern Language Review. She has taught English in Britain,
Canada and the United States.
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EDITORS: Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley
BIBLIOGRAPHER: G. E. Bentley, Jr.
REVIEW EDITOR: Nelson Hilton
ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR GREAT BRITAIN: David Worrall
PRODUCTION OFFICE: Department of English, Morey 410,
University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627-0451
MANAGING EDITOR: Sarah Jones [email protected]
i n I PHONE: 585/275-3820
FAX: 585/442-5769
Morris Eaves, Department of English, University of
Rochester, Rochester NY 14627-0451
Email: [email protected]
Morton D. Paley, Department of English, University of
California, Berkeley CA 94720-1030
G. E. Bentley, Jr., 246 MacPherson Avenue, Toronto,
Ontario M4V 1A2 Canada
The University of Toronto declines to forward mail.
Nelson Hilton, Department of English, University of
Georgia, Athens GA 30602
David Worrall, St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill,
Waldegrave Road, Twickenham TW1 4SX England
I N F O R M A T I O N
BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY is published under the spon-
sorship of the Department of English, University of Rochester. Subscriptions are $60 for institutions, $30 for individuals. All subscriptions are by the volume (1 year, 4 issues) and begin with the summer issue. Subscription payments received after the summer issue will be applied to
the 4 issues of the current volume. Addresses outside the
U.S., Canada, and Mexico require a $15 per volume postal
surcharge for surface delivery, and $20 for airmail. Credit
card payment is available. Make checks payable to Blake/
An Illustrated Quarterly. Address all subscription orders and
related communications to Sarah Jones, Blake, Department
of English, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 146270451. Back issues are available; address Sarah Jones for information on issues and prices, or consult the web site.
MANUSCRIPTS are welcome in either hard copy or electronic
form. Send two copies, typed and documented according
to forms suggested in The MLA Style Manual, and with
pages numbered, to either of the editors: Morris Eaves, Dept.
of English, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 146270451; Morton D. Paley, Dept. of English, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-1030. No articles will be returned unless accompanied by a stamped self-addressed
envelope. For electronic submissions, you may send a diskette, or send your article as an attachment to an email
message; please number the pages of electronic submissions.
The preferred file format is RTF; other formats are usually
acceptable.
© 2003 Copyright Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley
Cover: "Man on a Drinking Horse," by Thomas Butts. Reproduced by kind permission of Alexander S. Gourlay.
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William Blake and His Circle:
A Checklist of Publications and
Discoveries in 2002
BY G. E. BENTLEY, JR.
WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF DR. HIKARI SATO
FOR JAPANESE PUBLICATIONS
T
he annual checklist of scholarship and discoveries concerning William Blake and his circle records publications and discoveries for the current year (say, 2002) and
those for previous years which are not recorded in Blake
Books (1977), Blake Books Supplement (1995), and "William Blake and His Circle" (1994-2002). The organization
of the checklist is as in Blake Books (1977):
Division I: William Blake
Part I:
Editions, Translations, and Facsimiles of
Blake's Writings
Section A: Original Editions, Facsimiles, and
Reprints
Section B: Collections and Selections
Part II: Reproductions of his Art
Part III: Commercial Book Engravings
Part IV: Catalogues and Bibliographies
Part V: Books Owned by William Blake the Poet
Appendix: Books Owned by the Wrong
William Blake
Part VI: Criticism, Biography, and Scholarly Studies
Note: Collections of essays on Blake and issues of periodicals devoted entirely to him are listed in one place; their
authors may be recovered from the index.
Division II: Blake's Circle1
This division is organized by individual (say, William
Hayley or John Flaxman), with works by and about Blake's
friends and patrons, living individuals with whom he had
significant direct and demonstrable contact. It includes
Thomas Butts and his family, Robert Hartley Cromek,
George Cumberland, John Flaxman and his family, Henry
Fuseli, Thomas and William Hayley, John Linnell and his
family, Samuel Palmer, James Parker, George Richmond,
1. There is nothing in Blake Hooks (1977) or Blake Hooks Supple
merit (1995) corresponding to Division II: Blake's Circle.
4 Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
Henry Crabb Robinson, Thomas Stothard, John Varley, and
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright. It does not include important contemporaries with whom Blake's contact was negligible or non-existent, such as John Constable and William
Wordsworth and Edmund Burke. Such major figures are
dealt with more comprehensively elsewhere, and the light
they throw upon Blake is very dim.
Reviews, listed here under the book reviewed, are only
for works which are substantially about Blake, not for those
with only, say, a chapter on Blake. The authors of the reviews may be recovered from the index.
I take Blake Books (1977) and Blake Books Supplement
(1995), faute de mieux, to be the standard bibliographical
books on Blake2 and have noted significant differences from
them.
I have made no systematic attempt to record manuscripts
and typescripts, audio books and magazines,' CD-ROMs,
chinaware,4 comic books, 5 computer printouts, radio or
television broadcasts, calendars, exhibitions without catalogues, festivals and lecture series, furniture with inscriptions, microforms, music, pillows, poems, postage stamps,*
posters, published scores, recorded readings and singings,
rubber stamps, T-shirts, tattoos (temporary" or permanent),
video recordings, or e-mail related to Blake.
The status of electronic "publications" becomes increasingly vexing. Some such works seem to be merely electronic versions of physically stable works, and some suggest no more knowledge than how to operate a computer,
such as reviews invited for the listings of the book-sale firm
of Amazon.com, which are divided into those by (1) the
author, (2) the publisher, and (3) other, perhaps disinterested, remarkers. For instance, Google, the largest electronic scrap heap known to me, had (on 20 February 2003)
2. Except for the states of the plates for Blake's commercial book
engravings, where the standard authority is R. N. Essick, William
Blake's Commercial Book lllustrations (1991).
3. E.g., Roger Lundin, "On the Vision of William Blake," Mars
Hill Audio journal: A bimonthly audio magazine of contemporary
culture and Christian conviction 51 ([Charlottesville, Virginia] JulyAugust 2001): Disc 2.
4. For instance, a mug with a color reproduction of The Ancient
of Hays, marked "Bone China" (London: British Museum [2002]).
5. For instance, Stan Lee presents Wolverine in Origin, Part V of
VI: Revelation; Paul Jenkins, Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada, plot; Paul
Jenkins, script; Andy Kubert, pencils; Richard Isanove, original painting; JCi and Comcraft's Wes Abbott and Saida Temofonte, lettering
. . . (New York: Marvel Comics, May 2002)—a well made comic strip
which begins (the first 18 panels) with a recitation of "The Tyger."
6. A black-and-white 40 kopeck postage stamp of the U.S.S.R.
(1958) representing the Phillips-Vhiavonetti portrait of Blake, somewhat adjusted, acquired by R. N. Essick, is described and reproduced
by him in Blake 35 (2002): 120. The onlv other Blake stamp recorded
{Blake 2d [1993]: 149) was issued m Romania In i 4 ?~
7. *Marty Noble (designer), Blake Art Tattoos (Mmcoh. New York:
Dover Publications, Inc.. 2002). 16°, 4 pp. (including covers and 4
removable "tattoos"); ISSN: 0486421996.
Summer 2003
2,340,000 apparently unsorted entries for Blake, 625,000
for William Blake, and even 488 for Gerald Eades Bentley,
including Gerald Eades Bentley, [Sr.], author of The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, Gerald Eades Bentley, Jr., author
of The Stranger from Paradise, and the 1919 University of
Michigan football team. I have not searched for electronic
publications, and I report here only those I have happened
upon which appear to bear some authority.8
The chief indices used in compiling this 2002 checklist
were Books in Print Supplement 2001-2002 (April 2002) (24
Blakes, none new); Canadian Periodical Index: Index de
periodiques canadiens (2001) (1), (2002) (1); Dissertation
Abstracts International (1997-98, 2001-02); 2000 MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures (2001 [i.e., Feb. 2002]) (42)
and the online version (31 Oct. 2002); Whitakers Books in
Print2002 (January 2002) (64 Blakes, none new).
I am indebted for help of many kinds to the editors of
AnaChronisT, A. A. Ansari, Dr. E. B. Bentley, Subir Dhar,
Detlef Dorrbecker, Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, Francisco Gimeno (for prolific assistance with Spanish publications), Alexander Gourlay, Andrew Greg (for heroic lists
of locations of Lavater's Physiognomy), Amir Hussein (my
authority on, inter alia, comic books and film), Mary Lynn
Johnson (for extensive locations of Lavater's Physiognomy
[ 1789-98]), Jeff Mertz (our man at the Library of Congress),
Morton D. Paley, Hikari Sato, the Rev. Mr. Craig Swanson,
and Joseph Viscomi.
I should be most grateful to anyone who can help me to
better information about the unseen (§) or unreported
items, and I undertake to thank them prettily in person
and in print.
Research for "William Blake and His Circle, 2002" was
carried out in the Bibliotheca La Solana, Huntington Library, University of Miami Library, University of Toronto
Library, and the Toronto Public Library.
Symbols
* Works prefixed by an asterisk include one or more illustrations by Blake or depicting him. If there are more than
19 illustrations, the number is specified. If the illustrations
include all those for a work by Blake, say Thel or his illustrations to VAllegro, the work is identified.
§ Works preceded by a section mark are reported on second-hand authority.
8. Tor electronic publications, see entries for the William Blake
Archive; Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly; G. E. Bentley, Jr., Stranger from
Paradise (reviews); Mark Ferrara; Edward Robert Friedlander; Matthew Green; Karl Joseph Holtgen; Patrick Mooney; Keith Sagar;
Michael Phillips, William Blake: The Creation of the Songs I Windle
review).
Summer 2003
Abbreviations
BB
BBS
Blake
BR (2)
Butlin
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books (1977)
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books Supplement (1995)
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (Second Edition)
(2003)
Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of
William Blake (1981)
Blake Publications and Discoveries in 2002
Blake studies are impressively and increasingly international and polyglot. Publications recorded here are in
Catalan, Dutch, English, Finnish (2), French (10), German
(4), Italian (7), Japanese (20), Portuguese, Spanish (29), and
Swedish. The most extraordinary new fecundity is in Spain,
where during the last decade Blake has probably been the
most widely published English Romantic poet, though accounts of him are mostly limited to introductions. 9 And
besides these publications in non-English languages, there
are English essays in the Hungarian AnaChronisT (3) and
the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, in
the Indian Aligarh Journal of English Studies (2), Dibrugarh
Journal of English Studies, and Rabindra Bharati University
Journal of the Department of English, plus a book by A. A.
Ansari who founded the Aligarh journal. Essays in English
by Minton, Sato, Suzuki, Toyoda, and Yamauchi appeared
in Japanese periodicals, and Kenzaburo Oe's extraordinary
Blake-framed novel Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!
has at last been translated from Japanese into English. Blake
scholars and lovers are rousing up right round the world.
Blake's Writings
The only work in Illuminated Printing known to have
changed hands'" is the fragmentary For the Sexes (N), which
is now in the custody of a mysterious private foundation in
New York.
There are newly recorded reproductions of The First Book
of Urizen (A, C, F), Jerusalem (E), Marriage (H), and Visions of the Daughters of Albion (E), but only the last two
9. This publishing vigor is not the result of the enthusiasm of
just one publisher or city, for the Spanish works were published in
Barcelona (4), Buenos Aires, Madrid (8), Mexico City, San Sebastian,
and Sevilla. Almost all this new information about Spanish publications derives from the extraordinary generosity of my friend Francisco Gimeno Suances.
10. Not counting the manuscript of Blake's Descriptive Catalogue,
colored copies of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem
and other Blake treasures not otherwise known which were claimed
by R. C. Jackson (see "Richard C. Jackson, Collector of Treasures and
Wishes," Blake 36 [2002-03]: 92-105).
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 5
are in hard copies. The handmade facsimile of Songs of
Innocence and of Experience (P) called Beta has changed
hands, and a newly discovered nineteenth-century(?) facsimile of the Experience portion of Songs (T) has here been
ingeniously denominated Gamma.
Among newly recorded editions of Blake, the most remarkable feature is the diversity of languages: French, Finnish, and Spanish (16). These are not all Blake samplers,
for there are separate Spanish editions of Urizen (1947,
2002), Marriage (1935, 2002), "The Mental Traveller"
(1934), Milton (2002), Songs (2000), and Visions (1934,
1973, 1975).
Blake's Art
The sparse reproductions of Blake's art include reprints
of the fine edition of Blake's Dante drawings by David
Bindman and of Morton Paley's selection of his visual
works. More remarkable, or at least more novel, is the Spanish picture book (2001) published in the series of Grandes
Maestros de la Pintura, accompanied by fairly learned essays. It is not only Blake's poetry which is rousing interest
in Spain.
The drama of the nineteen rediscovered but not-yet-publicly-seen drawings for Blair's Grave continues, but, as no
fresh news of their sale or destination reached print in
2002," there is nothing to be said about them here.
Blake's Commercial Engravings
New information about Blake's commercial engravings
is remarkably sparse: a previously unrecorded proof for the
frontispiece to Blair's Grave (1808), a new location for
Hayley's Cowper (1803-04), new sketches for Hayley's Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802), and scores of new locations for Lavater's Physiognomy.
Blake Catalogues
The record of exhibition catalogues is similarly spare.
Camden Hotten reproductions of Blake were exhibited as
if they were Blake's originals in 1892; a significant Blake
exhibition was held in Helsinki in 2000; and a very minor
Blake exhibition was shown at the University of Virginia
Art Museum in 2002. The last is chiefly remarkable for its
11. The information available about the Blair drawings up to the
autumn of 2002 is in R.N. Bttkk, "Blake In the Marketplace, 2001,"
m Blake 35 (spring 2002); C. 1 . Bcntlcy, Jr., "Blake ami His Cirde,"
Blake 36 (summer 2002); Essick's "Marketplace, 2002," Blake 36
(spring 2003); Martin Butlin,"New Risen from the Crave: Nineteen
Unknown Watcuolors by William Blake," Blake 35 (winter 2002);
and Colin Cleadell, "Blake's lost work found 165 years on," TkkgUtph
31 Jan. 2002.
record of the Blake holdings of a previously unknown private foundation in New York.
Books Owned by Blake the Poet
No new book which belonged to William Blake the poet
has been identified (though R. C. Jackson claimed to own
unidentified scores), but the poet's connection with a copy
of Bentley's edition of Milton (1732) has been convincingly
dismissed by Alexander Gourlay. It rested almost exclusively on the fragile evidence of a "W.B." whose author may
not have been named "William" or even "Blake." He might
have been any of the 164 men with the initials "W.B." listed
in the Dictionary of National Biography (to 1900) who were
born before 1810 and died after 1770, including painters
such as William Beechey (1753-1839), engravers such as
William Bromley (1769-1842), printers such as William
Buhner (1757-1830), and authors such as William Beckford
(1759-1844). And this is not to mention the 190 men named
"William Blake" who flourished in London between 1740
and 1830.12
Scholarship and Criticism
Books
The most extensive and often the most formidable arguments and evidence about Blake customarily appear in
books. Those listed below are generally of less ambition
than this. Nicholas Marsh, William Blake: The Poems (2001)
is a simplistic student guide, and a number of others are
derived from doctoral dissertations:13 Tristanne Connolly,
William Blake and the Body (2002), based on a Cambridge
dissertation;14 Subir Dhar, "Burning Bright": William Blake
and the Poetry of Imagination (2001), based on a Kolkata
dissertation; Kevin Hutchings, Imagining Nature: BlakeV Environmental Poetics (2002), derived from a McMaster doctoral dissertation; and Helene Pharabod-Ibata, William
Blake: L'invention d'une esthetique (2001), a Sorbonne thesis.
More mature work is visible in A. A. Ansari's William
Blake's Minor Prophecies (2001), a sequel to his Arrows of
Intellect: A Study of William Blake's Gospel of the Imagination (1965). The arguments are familiar but carefully made,
a worthy culmination of a long career of Blake studies.
Shirley Dent and Jason Whittaker, Radical Blake: Influence and Affinities from 1827 (2002) is a scholarly study of
somewhat miscellaneous Blake influences and affinities.
12. See "'My name is Legion: for we are many': 'William Blake' in
London 1740-1830," BR [2) B29-46.
13. Doctoral dissertations in progress are now listed on the web
site of Blake/An Must ratal Quarterly.
14. Tristanne Connolly reports evidence that Catherine Blake,
perhaps the poet's wife, may have had a miscarriage in 1796.
Summer 2003
The most remarkable book detailed below is neither critical nor scholarly; indeed, it is scarcely a book about Blake
at all. It is a work of fiction, in which the frame, words, and
genius throughout are those of William Blake crafted with
extraordinary deftness and moving eloquence into autobiography. Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! by the
Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe has at last, after sixteen years,
been translated from Japanese into English.
The novel tells of the maturing, discontinuous relationship between the narrator-author and his severely dysfunctional son Hikari, here called "Eeyore." The narrator has
"come upon any number of passages [in Blake] that somehow accord with the details of my life with my son" (121).
He tries to explain the world to his son, to show him the
reasons for actions and events, but Eeyore lacks almost entirely the faculty of reason. Instead he has a powerful sympathetic imagination; "the powers of his soul had not been
corrupted by Experience: in Eeyore, the power of innocence
had been preserved" (246). The father learns to cope with
his son, and teaches his son to cope with the world, through
Blake, eventually learning that, while he thought he was
succouring his son, his son was also succouring him through
his imaginative faculty. One of the nicer touches is that
when the author has gout, Eeyore caresses his foot and calls
it an excellent foot. When the author and Eeyore write a
play for the handicapped children in Eeyore's school, it is
an adaptation of Part 1 of Gulliver's Travels, and the giant
Gulliver is represented on stage only by a giant foot, in which
Eeyore as prompter is hidden. The titles of the book and
of each chapter are from Blake, and "perhaps everything I
have felt and thought in my life, including areas close to
my subconscious, was foretold by Blake" (223).
Songs of Innocence and of Experience were used to buttress
an argument by Michael Phillips16 that Blake created his
color prints by pulling them through the press twice, the
first time with the etched outlines in monochrome and the
second time with colors added to the copperplate.17 This
was challenged by R. N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi in Blake
35 (2002): 74-103. A reply by Michael Phillips admitted
that some of his most persuasive evidence, the pinholes,
simply did not exist,18 and Martin Butlin asked for consideration of the issue in a wider context than pinholes, extant or not.19 A rejoinder by Essick and Viscomi20 reaffirms
the evidence for single printing rather than double printing for Blake's color prints with a massive display of scholarship which makes one think of breaking a butterfly on a
wheel—or terriers chasing a non-existent fox down a nonexistent pinhole.
Critical Essays: The Plums in the Pudding
Seventeen original essays appeared in Blake/An Illustrated
Quarterly, fourteen in the Blake Journal, seventeen in
Alexander Gourlay's affectionate festschrift for Jack Grant,21
six in Studies in Romanticism—and of course scores elsewhere. Among the more remarkable of them are:
Mark Evans, "Blake, Calvert—and Palmer? The Album
of Alexander Constantine Ionides," Burlington Magazine 144
(2002): 539-49. It describes an album, recently acquired
by the Victoria & Albert Museum, which had apparently
been compiled by a prosperous Greek student and friend
of Edward Calvert, including important prints by Blake and
the Ancients, some of them by an anonymous Ancient previously unknown.
Essays: The Tools of Scholarship
A number of essays recorded here are intended to provide the tools of scholarship, records of facts with little argument or development. These include Robert N. Essick's
"Blake in the Marketplace, 2001? Blake 35 (2002): 108-30;
and G. E. Bentley, Jr.'s, "William Blake and His Circle: A
Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2001," Blake
36 (2002): 4-37; "Richard C. Jackson, Collector of Treasures
and Wishes," Blake 36 (2002-03): 92-105; "Blake's Visionary Heads: Lost Drawings and a Lost Book," 183-205 of
Romanticism and Millenarianism, ed. Tim Fulford (2002)
(to be reprinted in BR [2]); and "'My name is Legion: for
we are many': 'William Blake' in London 1740-1830," Blake
Journal No. 7 (2002): 24-32 (to be reprinted with full details in BR [2]).15
The liveliest debate has been concerned with, in effect,
nothing. Pinholes observed in a few leaves of a copy of
15. See also the excerpts from Leslie Chard's unpublished book
on Joseph Johnson in the Joseph Johnson section below.
Summer 2003
16. Michael Phillips, William Blake: The Creation of the Songs
from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing (2000) 95, 98, 103-04, repeated in the catalogue of the Tate exhibition (2000).
17. The single pin which made the hole at the top corner of the
print was oddly supposed to fix the leaf immovably in place so that
the second pull would align with the first as well as possible.
18. Michael Phillips, "Color-Printing Songs of Experience and
Blake's Method of Registration: A Correction," Blake 36 (2002): 4445. All who have examined the suspect leaves of Songs (T) for the
purpose—R. N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi, Michael Phillips, Dr. E. B.
Bentley, G. E. Bentley, Jr., and the print curator at the National Gallery of Canada—agree that there is no pinhole in them, no piercing
at all, though there are ink blobs which in a photograph could be
taken to be pinholes. See also Alexander S. Gourlay's review of
Phillips's book in Blake 36 (2002): 66-71.
19. Martin Butlin, "'Is This a Private War or Can Anyone Join
In?': A Plea for a Broader Look at Blake's Color-Printing Techniques,"
Blake 36 (2002): 45-49.
20. Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, "Blake's Method of
Color Printing: Some Responses and Further Observations," Blake
36 (2002): 49-64.
21. Prophetic Character: Essays on William Blake in Honor of John
E. Grant, ed. Alexander S. Gourlay (2002).
Kathryn Sullivan Kruger, "The Loom of Language and
the Garment of Words in William Blake's The Four Zoas"
in her Weaving the Word (2001), points out that in Blake's
time weaving was a male occupation, jealously guarded—
in Paris, women were prevented by law from being couturiers. In this context, it is surprising that weaving women
are so important in Blake.
Hikari Sato, in "The Devil's Progress: Blake, Bunyan, and
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" Eihungaku Kenkyu, Nihon
Eibungakkai: Studies in English Literature 78 (2002): 12146, argues very originally that" The Pilgrim's Progress is one
of the satirical targets in The Marriage." The case is put
very skillfully but, to my mind, not yet conclusively.
Morton Paley's essay on the so-called "Laocoon" (see
Studies in Romanticism) gives fascinating background on
Blake's print.
Four essays in Prophetic Character: Essays on William Blake
in Honor of John E. Grant, ed. Alexander S. Gourlay (2002)
seem to me particularly rewarding. (1) Michael Ferber, "In
Defense of Clods" (51-66) argues most persuasively for
Blake's intention to support the point of view of the Clod
in "The Clod and the Pebble." (2) Everett C. Frost, "The
Education of the Prophetic Character: Blake's The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell as a Primer in Visionary Autography"
(67-95) analyzes Marriage very successfully. (3) Jon Mee,
"'As portentous as the written wall': Blake's Illustrations to
blight Thoughts" (171-203) argues that Blake's understanding of Young appears to be at odds with that of his publisher and that Blake went out of his way to find references
to the apocalyptic books of the Bible in Night Thoughts.
(4) G. A. Rosso, "The Religion of Empire: Blake's Rahab in
its Biblical Contexts" (287-326) elucidates the contradictory biblical references to Rahab and her meaning in Blake
in an extraordinarily learned and illuminating essay.
Roads Not Taken: The Nuts in the Fruitcake
In "Welcome to My Garden," Linda Landers has produced
a lino-cut "inspired by the stories [plural] of William Blake
and his wife in the tree of their garden."- The singular
story, first printed in 1863, thirty-six years after Blake's
death, tells how his patron Thomas Butts dropped in on
the Blakes at their house in Lambeth and found them sitting naked in the garden reading Paradise Lost. Previous
embroideries of the tale, often by journalists, have represented Blake praying naked in his garden, or even the Blakes
dancing naked in their garden—but no one previously has
driven them naked up a tree in the garden.
In any case, the story is demonstrably false.2'
21. Wake Journal Ho. 7 (2002): 50.
23. Sec "Seven Red Herrings," BR (2) xxv-xxvi,
Division I: William Blake
Parti: Blake's Writings
Section A: Original Editions, Facsimiles,24
Reprints, and Translations
The First Book of Urizen (1794 [ -? 1818])
Copy A
History:... It was reproduced in the William Blake Archive
in 2002.
Copy C
in 2002.
Copy F
in 2002.
Copy G
History: . . . Reproduced with a translation by Jose Luis
Palomares in 2002.
Editions
El libro de Urizen. (Traduccion y noticia de N.N.) (San
Sebastian: Grafico-Editora, S.L., 1947) 52 pp.; no ISBN. In
Spanish.
"Noticia" (5-9). The prose translation of Urizen seems
to be little more than an adaptation of the translation of
Edmundo Gonzalez-Bianco (1928) <BB#113>.
§*£/ libra de Urizen=Thc book of Urizen. Tr. Jose Luis
Palomares. (Madrid: Ediciones Hiperion, S.L., Sept. 2002)
Poesia Hiperion, 434. 192 pp. In English and Spanish.
A facsimile of copy G.
For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise ([? 1826])
Copy N
History: (4) The anonymous collector <BBS p. 80> evidently passed it to an anonymous New York private foundation, which lent it to the exhibition at the University of
Virginia Art Museum, 26 January-31 March 2002.
Marriage of Heaven and Hell ([1790-1827])
Copy H
History: Reproduced in El matrimomo del cieloy el infierno,
tr. Castanedo (2002).
24. In this checklist, "facsimile" is taken to mean "an exact copv"
attempting very close reproduction of an original named copy ineluding size of image, color of printing (and of tinting it relevant),
and si/e. color, .UK\ qualitv of paper, with no deliberate alteration as
in page order or numbering or obscuring o\ paper defects, or centering the image on the page.
Summer 2003
Editions
"Les noces del eel i de l'infern." Tr. Agusti Esclasans.
Quaderns Literaris 41: Saadi, El jardi de les roses, William
Blake, Les noces del eel i de l'infern (Trad. d'A. Esclasans)
(Barcelona, 1935) 65-84. In Catalan.
"William Blake" (65-69), text of Marriage (71-84), lacking "A Song of Liberty."
*El matrimonio del cielo y el infierno: Edicion bilingiie de
Fernando Castanedo. Traducci6n de Fernando Castanedo.
(Madrid: Catedra, 2002) Letras universales. 12°, 147 pp.;
ISBN: 8437620007. In Spanish, with facing English for Marriage.
Teresita Arriandiaga y Fernando Castanedo, *"Introducci6n," 7-46, divided into "Vida de William Blake" (926) and "'El Matrimonio del Cielo y el Infierno'" (26-46);
"Esta Edicibn" (47-48); "Bibliografia" (49-54); color reproduction of Marriage (H) (55-81) followed by English and
Spanish texts on facing pages (84-145). The edition is based
upon the best and most recent Blake scholarship.
Review
1. Esther Ramon, el Critico: Revista Mensual de Literatura
Critica, Segunda epoca, Ano 1, No. 2: William Blake
(Noviembre 2002): 1-2 (compares Blake to Baudelaire,
Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Nietzsche, Burroughs . . . ) .
Mi/ftm (1804[-11])
Edition
* Milton: Un Poema. Ed. and tr. Bel Atreides. (Barcelona:
DVD ediciones, S.L., April 2002) DVD poesia, 47. 8°, 395
pp.; ISBN 849500769X. In Spanish and English.
"Introducci6n"(l 1-106), Milton in English facing Spanish (107-257), "Notas y Comentarios" (259-387), "Bibliografia (de los libros citados)" (390-92). This is a reliable
translation and an up-to-date introduction which is especially remarkable (in Spain) for its study of Blake's
polysemic language and dialectical narrative.
Reviews
1. Angel Ruperez, "Conquistas iluminadas," El Pais (Madrid)
25 de mayo de 2002, 3 pp. (with Prosa escogida [2002]). In
Spanish (the translation is reliable and the study well informed).
2. *Ramon Andres, "Paraiso sin suenos," El Periodico
[Barcelona] 28 de junio de 2002: 26 (with Prosa escogida).
In Spanish.
3. Jordi Doce, "Fdbula de una posesi6n," Letras Libres
[Madrid] Ano l,No. 12 (Septiembre 2002): 79-81. In Spanish (the introduction and translation by Bel Atreides "nos
ofrece, no s61o un estudio soberbio, sino una traduccion
fluida y rigurosa" [81]).
4. Juan Carlos Sunen, el Critico: Revista Mensual de Literatura Critica, Segunda epoca, Ano 1, No. 2: William Blake
(Noviembre 2002): 4-5. In Spanish.
Summer 2003
Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794 [-? 1831])
Contemporary Facsimiles
Copy Beta <BBS pp. 133-34>
History:... (4) Acquired from Colin Franklin by R. H. and
J. E. Schaffner.
Newly Recorded Copy
Copy Gamma
A previously unrecorded skillfully hand-colored—?and
hand-drawn—facsimile was made apparently in the late
nineteenth or early twentieth century. It consists of the
Experience plates (pi. 18-54) from Songs (T, in the British
Museum Print Room) plus the rare pi. b ("A Divine Image" [7 copies known], perhaps from Songs [b] in the
BMPR) and a list of the poems included, encased in blue
paper wrappers similar to those in William Muir's facsimiles (Innocence [D, 1884; A, 1927], Songs [U, 1885], Experience [A, T, 1927]).
According to R. N. Essick, "Blake in the Marketplace,
2002," Blake 36 (2003), it was twice unsuccessfully offered
by C. Borowski on eBay electronic auction (Oct.-Nov. 2002,
with reproductions).
Edition
* Cantares de Inocencia y Experiencia: que Muestran los Dos
Estados Contrarios del Alma Humana. Version Completa.
Traduccion e introduccion Miguel Grinberg. [ The paper
cover adds: Incluyeilustracionesoriginales.] (Buenos Aires:
Errepar,S.A.,2000) Longseller, Clasicos de Bolsillo. 12°, 144
pp.; ISBN: 9507398600. In Spanish.
"Introduccion: William Blake: La vision es la misi6n" (3-30;
discusses Allen Ginsberg and psychedelia and says Blake was
like a hippy); 8 color "Ilustraciones de William Blake por
Cantares de Inocencia y Cantares de Experiencia" (31 -47).
Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793 [ -1818 ])
Editions
§*"Visiones de las Hijas de Albion (Visions of the Daughters of Albion)." Tr. Pablo Neruda. CruzyRaya: Revista de
Afirmacion y Negaci6n 7 (1934): 83-104. In Spanish. B.
Obras Completas. Ed. Margarita Aguirre, Alfonso Escudero,
and Hernan Loyola. (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1973) Vol. III.
C. Reprint of Cruz y Raya (Nedeln-Liechtenstein: Kraus
Reprint, 1975) Biblioteca del 36: Revistas Literarias en la
Segunda Republica Espanola. 265-84.
*Visions of the Daughters of Albion. Ed., with a commentary, by Robert N. Essick. (San Marino, California: Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 2002) 4°, xviii, 80 pp., 28
plates; ISBN: 087328187X.
Facsimile of copy E ([viii-xviii]), transcription of copy E
(3-14), "The Huntington Copy: Bibliographic and Textual
Notes" (15-16), "List of Illustrations from Blake's Notebook" (19-20), Commentary (21-69), and "Bibliography:
Studies of Visions of the Daughters of Albion" (75-78).
Section B: Collections and Selections^
La boda del Cielo y el Infierno. (Primeros libros profeticos)
Versidn castellana con introduccion y notas por Edmundo
Gonzalez-Bianco. (Madrid: Editorial Mundo Latino, 1928)
In Spanish. <B5#113>
"Introduccion del Traductor" (5-82). The prose translations are organized into "Dogmas y Principios": Marriage,
All Religions are One, and There is No Natural Religion;
"Leyendas Simbolicas": Tiriel, Thel, and "Vision of the Last
Judgment"; "Los Acontecimientos Contemporaneos": "A
Song of Liberty" [from Marriage] and The French Revolution; "Las Cosmogonias y los Grandes Simbolos": Urizen,
Ahania, The Book of Los, The Song of Los, and Europe.
There is no explicit connection between this volume of
"Primeros libros profeticos" (1928) and Premiers livres
prophetiques, tr. Pierre Berger (1927) <BB #307>.
The Spanish translation of Vrizen by N.N. (1947) seems
to be adapted from this translation.
BB #113 did not notice that the volume includes Blake
texts besides the Marriage of the title page.
§*Boda del cielo y el infierno; El libro de Thel; Tiriel; Visiones
de las Hijas de Albion. Versidn y diseno de Sergio Santiago.
(Mexico [City]:LetrasVivas,2000)21 cm., 127 pp. In Spanish and English.
The Complete Writings of William Blake with All the Variant Readings. Ed. Geoffrey Keynes. (1957) <BB #370B under The Writings of William Blake>
Review
Robert F. Gleckner, "Blake, Bacon, Dante, and Sir Geoffrey
Keynes," Criticism 1 (1959): 265-70. <Blake (2002)§>
(Shrewd and valuable.)
None of Mane's translations of Blake's Poesia Completa
includes any poem printed after 1794, from The Song of Los
(1795) and Milton a Poem (1804[-?11 ]) to "To The Accuser"
in For the Sexes (?1825).
Obra Completa en Poesia. Edicion Bilingue. Tr. Pablo Mane
Garzon. Tomo I[-II]. (Barcelona: Ediciones29,septiembre
1980) Libros Rio Nuevo, 29. ISBN: 8471751860. B. *Poesia
Completa. Edicion Bilingue. Tomo I[-II]- Prologo: Pablo
Mane. Introduccion: Mariano Vazquez Alonso. Correction
y revisi6n: E. Caracciolo Trejo. (Barcelona: Ediciones 29,
segunda edicion, diciembre 1984) 8"; ISBN: 8471751860.
<BBSp. \6l; Blake {\998)>
"Pr61ogo" (7-15); "Introduccion" (I-XVII).
The other titles below are in Spanish only.
§Poesia Completa. Tr. Pablo Mane Garzon. ([Madrid]:
Hyspamerica, 1986) Biblioteca personal, 4.246 pp., 21 cm.;
ISBN: 8459912175. <Blake (1994, 1998)>
§Poesia Completa. Tr. [Pablo Mane Garzon], ed. Mariano J.
Vazquez Alonso. 1"' ed. (Sant Cugat del Valles: Ediciones
29,07/1995) ISBN: 8471753723. <Blake (1998)>
§*Obra poetica. Tr. Pablo Mane Garzon. (Barcelona:
Ediciones 29, 1992) Coleccion Ucieza. 12°, 258 pp.; ISBN:
8471753413. <Blake (1994, 1998)> B. §(1998) ISBN:
8471753413. C. (2001) ISBN: 8471753413.
Pablo Mane Garzbn, "Prologo" (13-19); Mariano Vazquez
Alonso, "Introduccion" (1980) (21-40).
§Obra poetica. Tr. [Pablo Mane Garzon]. (Sant Cugat del
Valles: Ediciones 29, 02/1997) ISBN: 8471754266.
§Milton suivi de Le Jugement dcmicr. Tr. P. Leyris. (Paris:
Joseph Corti, 1999) In French.
§Poemas de los esbozos pocticos y otros. Tr. Pablo Mane. (Sant
Cugat del Valles: Ediciones 29,09/1999) ISBN: 8471754754.
The correct order of titles of the Spanish translations of
Blake by Pablo Mane Garzon seems to be:
*Obra Completa en Poesia. Edicion Bilingue. Tr. Pablo Mane
Garz6n. [2 vols.] (Madrid: Ediciones 29, 1980) Libros Rio
Nuevo, 29-30; Serie Poesia XXI-XXII. ISBN: 8471451852.
[The cover calls it Poesia Completa.} <BBS p. 159; Blake
(1998,2002)>
Pablo Mane Garz6n,"Pr6logo" (7-15); English and Spanish texts of Poetical Sketches, Notebook poems, Island, llicl,
Unci, and Songs (Vol. I); Notebook poems, French Revolution, Marriage {!), and \'isions; (Vol. II) on facing pages, with
prefatory notes to each work and a few footnotes. <BBS p.
159>
Poemas profeticos y prosas: Version y prologo de Cristobal
Serra. (Barcelona: Barral Editores, 1971) <BB #A282§, erroneously giving "Christobal" and 1941>
25. Here aiui below I ignore most mere reprints.
10 Bkke/Afl Illustrated Quarterly
A. Poemeschoisis.Tr. Madeleine L. Cazamian. (Paris, [ 1943])
(vMKN) In French. <BB #283A> B. §Paris, 1950. In French.
<BB #283B> C. *Poems/Poemes. (Paris, 1968) In French.
<BBSpp. 160§, 161 > D. William Blake. Ed. M.L. Cazamian.
(Madrid: Ediciones Jucar, Feb. 1984) Coleccion Los Poetas,
51. 8", 208 pp.; ISBN: 8433430513. In Spanish. <BBS p.
160>
In 1943, the Introduction is 9-92. The selections, facing
each Other in English and French, include Songs, Thel,
Urizen, "The Everlasting Gospel," and extracts from Marriage and Milton; in 1968 the poems are on facing pages
Summer 2003
(90-311); in 1984, the "Antologia" with selections, English
facing Spanish, tr. Cristobal Serra, are from Songs, "Auguries of Innocence," Marriage, Visions, [Vala], Milton, Jerusalem, and "The Everlasting Gospel" (121-201).
In 1968 are the "Introduction" (7-84), "Notes" (313-14),
"Termes Usites dans la Cosmogonie de Blake" (315-16).
In 1984 are the "Introduction," tr. Marie-Christine del
Castillo and Abelardo Linares (9-118), and "Bibliografia
Esencial" 1863-1951 (213-14). For many years, this was
probably the best known text on Blake in Spanish.
Chapter 5 of the Introduction is translated into Japanese
in Bokushin: Bungaku Kikan: Faunus [The Quarterly of Literature] No. 5 (Jan. 1976) [Special Issue:] William Blake
yogen: to shinpi no sho: William Blake: [The Books of
Prophecy and Mystery]. <BBS p. 421>
The Poems of William Blake. Ed. W. B. Yeats. (London, 1893)
The Muses Library. B. (New York, 1893) C. (London and
New York, [1905]) D. Mr. William Butler Yeats Introduces
the Poetical Works of William Blake. (London, 1910) Books
that Marked Epochs. E. Poems of William Blake. (New York,
[1920]) Modern Library. <BB #293A-E> F. (New York,
1938) <BBSp. 161> G. (London, 1969) The Muses Library.
<BB 293F> H. (London, 1979) <BBS p. 161 > I. ^Collected
Poems. Ed. W. B. Yeats with a new introduction by Tom
Paulin. (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) xliii, 256
pp.; ISBN: 041528984X (hardbound) and 0415289858 (paperback).
In the 2002 edition, Paulin's introduction is xi-xvii.
The Poems, with Specimens of the Prose Works. With a Prefatory Notice by Joseph Skipsey. (London, 1885) <BB#298A>
B. (London: Walter Scott; New York: Thomas Whittaker;
Toronto: W. J. Gage & Co., 1888) C. (London, Felling-onTyne, New York, and Melbourne, [?1904]) <BB #298B>
%Tiikeri (The Tyger). ([Helsinki?], 2002) In Finnish.
A pamphlet with translations of "The Tyger" for use in
school discussions of problems in translating poetry.
The Tyger. (2002)
A folded envelope held by a Japanese bone fastener with,
pasted inside, a fold-out leaf with Blake's poem and new
designs, inscribed "2002" and "Linda Anne Landers."
§*"E1 viajero mental (The Mental Traveller)." Tr. Pablo
Neruda. CruzyRaya: Revista de Afirmacion y Negation 7
(1934): 107-09. In Spanish. B. (Nedeln-Liechtenstein:
Kraus Reprint, 1975) Biblioteca del 36: Revistas Literarias
en la Segunda Repiiblica Espahola. 285-89.
The William Blake Archive: www.blakearchive.org
The Archive has incorporated new editions of The First
Book of Urizen (A, C, F) and Jerusalem (E); these are the
first reproductions of Urizen copies C and F. See also Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, "The William Blake Archive: The Medium, When the Millennium is
the Message," Chapter 14 (219-33) of Romanticism and
Millenarianism, ed. Tim Fulford (2002), and Joseph
Viscomi, "Digital Facsimiles: Reading the William Blake
Archive," Computers and the Humanities 36 (2002): 27-48.
Review
1. Stuart Curran,"The Blake Archive," Text 12 (1999): 21619 (while it has a "skilful and copious search engine" and
"the Blake world is indeed fortunate to have its three most
illustrious scholars pool their knowledge" thus [217,218],
Curran has some caveats about the "Welcome Page").
Part II: Reproductions of Drawings and Paintings
Section A: Illustrations of Individual Authors
*Prosa escogida. Pr61ogo, selection y traduction de Bel
Atreides. (Barcelona: DVD ediciones, April 2002) Coleccion
Los Cinco Elementos, 21. 190 pp.; ISBN: 8495007681. In
Spanish.
"Prologo" (7-14) and "Bibliografia" (181-83). The Blake
texts are All Religions are One, There is No Natural Religion,
Marriage, Descriptive Catalogue, "Vision of the Last Judgment," "Pr6logos en prosa de Jerusalen," and "Cartas" (some
letters of 1799-1805).
Reviews
1. Angel Ruperez, "Conquistas iluminadas," El Pais (Madrid)
25 de mayo de 2002, 3 pp. (with Milton [2002]). In Spanish.
2. ' R a m o n Andres, "Paraiso sin suehos," El Periodico
[Barcelona] 28 de junio de 2002: 26 (with Milton).
Dante Alighieri
*The Divine Comedy: Die Gottliche Komodie: La Divine
Comedie. Ed. David Bindman. Traduction en francais:
Nicholas Powell; Ubersetzung ins Deutsche: Inge Hanneforth. (Paris: Bibliotheque de l'image, [2000]) Oblong 4°,
223 pp., 103 color reproductions; ISBN: 2909808939 ("Edition in english"); 2909808947 ("Deutsche Ausgabe");
2909808718 ("Edition en francais") [but GEB's copy is trilingual in English, French, and German]. <Blake (2001)>
B. §*La divina comedia—la divina commedia— degoddelijke
komedie. (Paris: Bibliotheque de l'image, 2000) 222 pp.;
ISBN: 2909808955 (Italian); 2909808963 (Spanish);
2909808971 (Dutch).
Selected Poems. (New York: Gramercy Books, 1995) 8°, 224
pp.; ISBN: 051712367. <Blake (1996)> B. Întroduction
by Christopher Moore, New York, 1995. (N.p.: State Street
Press, 2002) 224 pp.; ISBN: 0681741767.
Summer 2003
Section B: Collections and Selections
* Blake. (Barcelona: Ediciones Altaya, 2001) Grandes Maestros de la Pintura, 48. 4°, 41 pp., 89 reproductions; ISBN:
844871413X. In Spanish.
A picture book with text consisting of: "Introduction"
(1); "Vida y epoca" (2-7); "Trayectoria creativa" (8-15);
"Estilo y tecnica" (16-21); "La obra maestra [Satanas castiga
a Job con llagas purulentas (1826)]" (22-27); "Las [5]
grandes obras" (28-37); "Museos y Galerias" (the Fitzwilliam Museum) (38-40).
*Blake Art Tattoos. Designed by Marty Noble. (Mineola,
New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002) 16°, 4 pp. (including covers and 4 removable "tattoos"); ISBN: 0486421996.
William Blake. Ed. Morton D. Paley. (Oxford: Phaidon,
1978) B. §Tr. into German by Priska-Monika Hottenroth.
(Stuttgart, Berlin, Koln, Mainz: W. Kohlhammer, 1978)
<BBS p. 182> C. §New printing in English (Ware, Hertfordshire: Omega Books, 1983).
Part III: Commercial Book Engravings
Blair, Robert, The Grave (1808, 1813,...) <BB #435>
1813 [i.e., ?1870] New Location: Art Institute (Chicago).
Proof: A proof of the frontispiece lacking the imprint but
with the other lettering was offered on the eBay electronic
auction of April 2002, according to R. N. Essick, "Blake in
the Marketplace, 2002"Blake 36 (2003).
Bryant, Jacob, An Analysis... of Ancient Mythology
(1774-76) <BB#439>
1774, 1776 New Location: Art Institute (Chicago).
Dante, Blake's Illustrations of Dante (1838) <BB #448>
The plates are reproduced in the catalogue (12 March-5
May 1985) of Robert Loder's collection called The Print in
England 1790-1990 (1985).
Hayley, William, Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802)
<BBS #466>
The newly rediscovered drawing of "The Resurrection"
(mid-1780s) (Butlin#610,Untracedsince 1863) has on the
verso pencil "studies of eyes, the head of an eagle, a human
face, and a lion," some of which "are related to Blake's 1802
Designs to a Series of Ballads" according to R. N. Essick,
"Blake in the Marketplace, 2002," Blake 36 (2003); both
recto and verso are reproduced in the Sotheby catalogue of
5 July 2002, Lot 183.
Hayley, William, Life... of William Cowper, 3 vols.
(1803-04) <BB#468>
New Locations: Buckinghamshire County Record Office;
Cowper and Newton Museum (Olney, Buckinghamshire).
Lavater, John Caspar, Essays on Physiognomy
(1789, 1792,1798; 1810; 1792 [i.e., ?1817]) <BB#481>
1789-92-98 New Locations: Aberdeen; Adelphi College;
Arents Collection (New York Public Library, in fascicles);
Arizona; Art Institute (Chicago); Atlantic School of Theology (Halifax, Nova Scotia); Badische Landesbibliothek
(Karlsruhe, Germany); Belfast Central Library; Biblioteka
Universytecka (Warsaw); Bibliotheque Forney (Paris);
Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris) (Vol. Ill incomplete);
Birkenhead Central Library; Birmingham; Boston College;
Brigham Young; British Columbia (2: BF843.L3 1789 A and
B; BBS gives 1); British Library (3: L.R.255.d.l0; 30.g.l-3;
C. 156.h.l2; BB gives 1); California (Los Angeles—Biomedical; Santa Barbara [2: BF843.L3 1789A and B]; Southern
Regional Library [2 sets, Facility A and B]; San Diego); Canterbury (New Zealand); Cape Town; Chetham's Library
(Manchester, England); Cincinnati and Hamilton County
Public Library; Cleveland Museum of Art; Colorado State;
Columbia (2 sets: Kent BF843.L3 189 and B128 422) <BBS
gives 1 set>; Connecticut College; Dallas Public Library;
Drexel; Durham Cathedral; Edinburgh; Essex; Fordham;
Free Library of Philadelphia; Harvard (3: Typ 705.89.
513(A)F; Typ 705.89.513(B)F; Phil 6012.2; BBS gives 1),
Herzog Anna Amalia Bibliothek (Weimar, Germany);
Hofstra; Hollins; Humboldt Universitat (Berlin); Indiana;
Indiana State; Johns Hopkins (2: Eisenhower BF 847 and
Welch Inst. Hist. Med. L397 pi798); Library Company of
Philadelphia (2 sets, each Lava 7579F—the Wolf set lacks
Vol.V); Library of Congress; London (University of); Massachusetts Historical Society; Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; McGill; Metropolitan Museum (NY); Miami
University School of Medicine (Vol. Ill only); Michigan (2:
RBR BF843.L393 [RBR and Taubman Medical Library]);
Michigan State; Minneapolis Public Library; Minnesota;
Monmouth University (West Long Branch, New Jersey);
Multnomah County Library (Portland, Oregon); National
Library of Australia; National Library of South Africa; National Library of Switzerland; National Library of Wales;
National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.); New York
Academy of Medicine; New York Public Library; Northern
Colorado; Pennsylvania State; Pittsburgh University (History of Medicine); Princeton (2 sets: CLL97833 [Firestone]
and Oversize 6453.5 6874 gl extra) <BBS reports 1 set>;
Queen's College (Oxford); Rhode Island; Rochester (2:
BF843.L3 1789 and L397 1789-98); Royal College of Physicians (Dublin); St. Andrews; Sheffield Central Library;
Smith College; Smithsonian Institution (2 sets, 1 defective 1;
South Australian Parliamentary Museum (Adelaide); South
Carolina; Southern California; Staatsbibliothek Berlin (2:
Summer 2003
NN11702 and NN1120702ff); Stanford; Stiftung Bibliothek
Werner Oechslin (Einsiedeln, Switzerland); Temple; Texas
(2 sets, 1 in fascicles); Trinity College (Oxford); Tubingen
University; Tulane; Union College (NY); University College (Dublin); Union College (Schenectady, NY); Victoria
& Albert Museum (1 set plus a duplicate Vol. II); Washington (Seattle); Wesleyan (Middletown, CT); West Virginia;
Western Ontario; Dr. Williams' Library; Winterthur (Delaware); Wisconsin (Milwaukee); Wittenberg University
(Ohio); Yale (4 sets: Beinecke Zg 18 L412 g789a; Sterling
421+1789L [Franklin Collection]; Medical/Historical 18thcent.; Lewis Walpole Library [Farmington] 4to 69.789.L38);
Yale Center for British Art (in fascicles); Zentralbibliothek
(Zurich) (at least 4 sets).
1810 New Locations: Bradford (Bradford, Yorkshire); British Library (2 sets: Wal/0595 [Vol. I only] and fl38*135*);
California (Santa Cruz); Carnegie Library (Pittsburgh);
Colorado; Connecticut College; Cornell; Georgia (2 sets);
Glasgow; Huntington (2 sets; BBS reports only 1); Iowa;
Kalamazoo College; Library of Congress; Liverpool; London; London Institute; Los Angeles Public Library; Lucerne
Zentralbibliothek (Lucerne, Switzerland); Manchester;
Metropolitan Museum (NY); Mills College (Oakland, CA);
National College of Art and Design (Dublin); New York
Academy of Medicine; New York Public Library (2 sets; BBS
reports 1); Pierpont Morgan Library; Queen's (Belfast);
Rochester; St. Elizabeth (College of, Morrison, NJ); South
Carolina; Texas (Austin); Texas (Medical Branch, Houston);
Trinity College (Hartford, CT); Tulane; Vermont; Wesleyan
(Middletown, CT); Yale; Yale Center for British Art;
Zentralbibliothek (Zurich).
1792 [i.e.,? 1817] New Locations: Alfred University (Alfred,
NY); Boston Athenaeum; Christ Church College (Oxford);
Connecticut College; Dillwyn Correctional Center; Duke;
Getty Library (Santa Monica, CA); Houston Academy of
Medicine; Indiana State; London Institute; McGill; National
Library of Scotland; Pennsylvania; Texas (Austin, with watermarks of 1801, 1804, 1806, 1809, 1817, and LEPARD);
Virginia; Wake Forest; Wesleyan (Middletown, CT); Western Reserve Historical Society (Cleveland, OH) <BBS lists
it under 1789-98>;Wistar Institute (Philadelphia); Zentralbibliothek (Zurich).
Mixed sets of uncertain constitution—Locations: Boston
Public Library; British Library; Edinburgh; Glasgow (17891810); Hamilton College (Clinton, NY) (Vol. Ill [1810]);
Liverpool ( I I I [1792], III [1810]) <BBS lists it under
"1792">; McGill; Pennsylvania State; Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) (I-Il [1792], III [1810]); Spokane Public Library;
Wolverhampton University (Wolverhampton, England);
Yale (2 sets watermarked 1801,1804,1806: Beinecke ZG18
L412+g789 and Sterling Krq3+775Lgd); Zentralbibliothek
(Zurich) (2 sets: Z Resl9-23; Z B and Z BX 339a-d).
Summer 2003
Part IV: Catalogues and Bibliographies
1892
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings & Sketches by Turner,
Gainsborough, Blake, And other contemporary English Masters. (New York: Frederick Keppel & Co., 1892) 4° height,
12° width.
The forty Blake drawings (#74-124) lent by Charles E.
West, Esq., LL.D., of Brooklyn, had previously been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1891); they do not
appear in Butlin, perhaps because they were thought to be
Camden Hotten reproductions.
1983
Robert N. Essick. The Separate Plates of William Blake.
(1983)<BBSp. 301>
For EssickV'New Information on Blake's Engravings," see
B/ate 35 (2002): 129.
12March-5May 1985
* The Print in England 1790-1990: A private collection: Catalogue of an exhibition first shown at the Fitzwilliam Museum 12 March to 5 May 1985. [Ed. Craig Hartley and Susan Ridyard.] (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, [1985])
4°; no ISBN.
David Blayney Brown, "The Romantic Tradition: William
Blake to Robin Tanner" (40-43). The collection is that of
Robert Loder, formed "within the last decade" (3); it includes
Flaxman's Iliad (1805), Odyssey (1805), Hesiod (1817), Blair's
Grave (1813), Virgil (1821), Job (1826), and Dante (1838)
(all 7 plates reproduced).
1991
Robert N. Essick. William Blake's Commercial Book Illustrations. (1991) <BBS p. 310>
For Essick's "New Information on Blake's Engravings," see
Blake 35 (2002): 129-30.
11 April-25 June 2000
*Wtlliam Blake 1757-1827. 11.4-25.6 2000. (Tennispalatsi:
Helsingin kaupungin taidemuseo; Tennispalatset: Helsingfors stads konstmuseum [2000]) 4", 188 pp., 55 plates; ISBN:
9518965447. In Finnish and Swedish.
1. Tuula Karjalainen, "Sipuhe" (6).
2. David Bindman, "Foretal" (7).
3."Johdanto"(8-15).
4. David Bindman and Simon Baker, catalogue of works from
the British Museum Print Room in Finnish (tr. Tomi
Snellman) (15-126).
5."Blaken Elama ja Aikakausi" (126-29).
6. "Inledning" (132-34).
7. Catalogue in Swedish (tr. Camilla Ahlstrom-Taavitsainen)
(137-83).
8. "Blake och Hans Tid" (outline of his life) (184-87).
The exhibition went subsequently to Prague.
Review
LBoOssianLindberg,B/aA:e35 (2002): 132-35 (the exhibition was "a tremendous success," and the catalogue is "excellent").
9 November 2000-24 June 2001
William Blake. (London: Tate Publishing, 2000) <Blake
(2002)>
Reviews
1. *G. E. Bentley, Jr.,"The Blake Exhibition at Tate Britain, 9
November 2000-11 February 2001, and at the Metropolitan
Museum, 27 March-24 June 2001, and their Catalogues,"
Blake 36 (2002): 64-66 (it was "a major exhibition,""mounted with enormous eclat and puffery," and the catalogue is
"useful and responsible" and "very generously illustrated,
though the reproductions vary capriciously in size" [65,66]).
2. Morton D. Paley, Studies in Romanticism 41 (2002): 34951 (among many virtues, the organization of the exhibition
is "quirky" and "arbitrary").
26 January-31 March 2002
"Prints by William Blake: "Portions of the Eternal World."
[An exhibition] 26 January-31 March 2002 [at the] University of Virginia Art Museum. (Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Art Museum, 2002) 4", 16 pp.; no ISBN.
Jill Hartz (Director), "Foreword" (3); Stephen Margulies
(Curator), "Prints by William Blake: 'Portions of the Eternal World'" (4-13); Anon., "Checklist" of 12 black-and-white
etched or engraved works (14-15) from "the Collection of a
Private Foundation" (Young's Night Thoughts [\797], Job
[1826], Dante [1838], and For the Sexes pi. 1-6, 11-13, 15
[i.e., pi. 3-8,13-15, 17]) and from the Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.
Advertisements, Notices, etc.
1. *Anon., "Exhibitions: 'Portions of the Eternal World':
Prints by William Blake January 26-March 31, Octagonal
Gallery and Main Gallery," University of Virginia Art Museum (Spring 2002): [4].
2. §*Ruth Latter, "Artistic Prophet," Daily Progress [newspaper, Charlottesville, Virginia] 7 Feb. 2002: Dl-2.
24 June-18 July 2002
"Pastoral Essay: An Exhibition of Printmaking in the English Pastoral Tradition from William Blake to Robin Tanner and the Cotswold Furniture of Gordon Russell. (London: The Fine Art Society PLC, 2002) 4", 64 pp.
The Rinder Virgil proofs are offered at £22,000. The sale
also includes George Richmond, Edward Calvert, and
Samuel Palmer.
Part V: Books Owned by
William Blake of London (1757-1827)
Appendix: Books Owned by the Wrong
William Blake in the Years 1770-1827
John Milton
MILTON's | PARADISE LOST. | A NEW EDITION, | By
RICHARD BENTLEY, D.D. | [Ornament] \ LONDON: \
Printed for JACOB TONSON; and for JOHN POULSON; and for | J.
DARBY, A. BETTESWORTH, and F. CLAY, in Trust for | RICHARD,
JAMES, and BETHEL WELLINGTON. | MDCCXXXII [1732]. <BBS
p. 322>
Collection: Dr. Michael Phillips.
It has two annotations and a "W B"; in BBS p. 322 the
initials are taken to be "persuasively signed . . . probably by
the poet," but Alexander Gourlay denies convincingly (in
an appendix to his review of Phillips's William Blake: The
Creation of the Songs in Blake 36 [2002]: 70-71), on the
basis of the unblakean handwriting and sentiments, "that
the poet William Blake had anything to do with this book";
indeed, there is no good reason to believe that the WB initials belong to anyone named Blake.
Part VI: Criticism, Biography, and Scholarly Studies
*Ackroyd, Peter. Blake. (1995) B. (1996) C(1997) <Blake
(1996, 1998)> D. Willnim Blake, Dichter, Maler, Visionar.
Tr. Thomas Eichhorn. (Munchen: Albrecht Knaus, 2001)
81', 475 pp., 58 plates; ISBN: 3813501027. In German.
The German edition apparently contains no new matter.
§Alves, Helio Osvaldo. "Urn Desenho da Vida: Traducao e
Traducoes." 113-28 of Lusitanica et Romanica. Ed. Martin
Hummel. (Hamburg: Buske, 1998) Romanistik in Geschichte und Gegenwart Beiheft, 1. In Portuguese.
On translations of Blake into Portuguese.
§Anon. Article on Blake. Australasian 23 March 1918.
The Blake works bought at the 1918 Linnell sale through
the Felton Bequest should make an interesting addition to
the collection at the National Gallery of Victoria.
§Anon. Article on Blake. Leader [?Melbourne] 3 April 1920.
On Blake's Dante designs at the National Gallery of
Victoria.
§Anon. Article on Blake. Argus [Melbourne] 11 Aug. 1920.
Blake's 32 drawings for Dante exhibited at the National
Gallery "artistically considered Me grotesque in the extreme," and the »4,000 paid tor them'seems to be very much
in excess of their value."
Summer 2003
§Anon. Article on Blake. Leader [?Melbourne] 4 Sept. 1920.
The Dante designs at the National Gallery of Victoria are
"most highly instructive and interesting" but "should not
be viewed by sensitive children."
§Anon. Article on Blake. Bulletin [Melbourne] 20 Feb. 1922.
Deplores the National Gallery of Victoria "set of watercolour freaks... supposedly to illustrate Dante's 'Inferno',
but really illustrating only the pretentious eccentricity of
Blake."
in British Literature, Vol. 58. 8°, 139 pp.; ISBN: 0773474323.
Kathleen Raine, "Foreword" (ix-xii). The "Prophecies"
dealt with are The French Revolution, Marriage, Visions,
America, Europe, Urizen, and "The Mental Traveller," with
appendices on "Double Perspective of Songs of Experience"
(85-110) and "Blake and the Kabbalah" (111-30); the latter
speaks of "the innumerable translations of theZohar... in
the eighteenth century" (111-12).
§Anon. Article on Blake. Herald [Melbourne] 20 June 1922.
Questions "the wisdom of purchasing the eccentric
[Dante] drawings of Blake" for the National Gallery of
Victoria.
§Armando, Miguelez. "Howard T. Young: 'Juan Ramon
Jimenez and His Readings in Blake, Shelley, and Yeats.'"
Revista de Estudios Hispdnicos 17 (1983): 304-06. In Spanish. <BBS p. 354>
This is a ghost; the author's family name is Miguelez, and
the entry is correctly given on BBS p. 573.
§Anon. Article on Blake. Sun [Melbourne] 14 Aug. 1923.
'7f we put them [Blake's Dante drawings at the National
Gallery of Victoria] in a window in Collins Street they would
be laughed at. It is the name that is bought, not the art."
§Balfour, Ian. "The Mediated Vision: Blake, Milton, and the
Lines of Prophetic Tradition." Chapter 6 (127-72) of his
The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002)
§Anon. Article on Blake. Argus [Melbourne] 2 June 1934.
"His work [Blake's Dante drawings at the National Gallery of Victoria] is of great historic interest from an art point
of view, and expresses the mind of a man possessed of an
extraordinary imagination."
"Barfoot, C. C. "'Milton Silent Came Down My Path': The
Epiphany of Blake's Left Foot." 61-84 of Moments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary Epiphany. Ed. Wim Tigges.
(Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999)
In Milton, "For Blake epiphany seems to indicate a moment of precarious fleeting consonance with the world"
(84).
§Anon. Article on Blake. Bulletin [Melbourne] 7 March
1945.
Blake's Dante drawings exhibited at the National Gallery
of Victoria make Anon, wonder how Blake got his reputation as an artist.
§Anon. "Blake's Burial Place. Poet's Grave Found in Bunhill
Fields After Many Years." Daily Chronicle 29 June 1911.
A sequel is in Allan Allport and Herbert Jenkins, "William
Blake's Grave," Daily Chronicle 1 July 1911. <BBS p. 335>
§Anon."£vangileevangile;compterendu." SpiraleNo. 174
(2000): 4. In French.
§Anon. "Rare Books Purchased." Argus [Melbourne] 18
March 1918.
On the Dante designs at the 1918 Linnell sale.
§Anon. "William Blake—Poet and Painter." Advocate
[Melbourne Catholic weekly] 3 Jan. 1929.
"His best work is very good indeed. But his worst work—
and the National Gallery of Victoria has some hideous examples of it [Dante drawings]—was very bad."
Ansari, A. A. William Blake's Minor Prophecies. (LewistonQueenston-Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001) Studies
Summer 2003
§Baulch, David M. "Reading Coleridge Reading Blake."
Coleridge Bulletin 16 (2000)
Baulch, David M. "Relative Aesthetics and the Last Judgment: Blake's Sublime and Kant's Third Critique" European Romantic Review 12 (2001): 198-205.
Though "Blake and Kant had little or no knowledge of
each other's work, there is much to be gained from a comparison of their thought" (204).
§Beal, Pamela. "Trembling Before the Eternal Female:
Blake's Call to a Transcendental Eros." Modern Language
Studies 30 (2000): 75-90.
Beer, John. "Romantic Apocalypses." Wordsworth Circle 32
(2001): 109-16.
Especially about Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
*Behrisch, Erika."'The Great Map of Mankind': Corporeal
Cartography and the Route to Discovery in William Blake's
Milton." English Studies in Canada 27 (2001): 435-58.
She describes Blake "constructing the body as the landscape to be traversed" (455), focusing on Milton pi. 32.
Benet, Laura. "William Blake [1757-1827]." 14-16 of her
Famous Poets for Young People. Illustrated. (New York: Dodd,
Mead and Company, 1964) Famous Biographies for Young
People.
The "Famous Poets" begin with Mother Goose. The Blake
section quotes "Reeds of Innocence" and "The Lamb."
Bentley, G. E., Ir. "Blake's Visionary Heads: Lost Drawings
and a Lost Book." Chapter 12 (183-205) of Romanticism
and Millenarianism. Ed. Tim Fulford. (New York and
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)
"I am primarily concerned to identify the three books in
which most of his Visionary Heads appear," including "surviving leaves that have been removed from them" and
"scores of Visionary Heads that have disappeared" (186).
The substance of this essay is used in BR (2).
Bentley, G.E., Jr. The Stranger from Paradise. (2001) <Blakc
(2002)>
Choice (Jan. 2002): 812 listed it among 650"Outstanding
Academic Titles, 2001," among 49 books on English and
American literature and from a total pool of 6,500 titles
reviewed.
Reviews
11. §Anon., Publishers Weekly 248, No. 261 (25 June 2001):
65 (writing "affectionately and authoritatively
Bentley
evokes something of the whole man," with "magnificent
color illustrations").
13. Scott Hightower, Library Journal (July 2001) ("academic
and thorough . . . With lovely illustrations").
15. Dennis Loy Johnson, "Poetry can help to ease the
troubled mind," Tribune-Review [Pittsburgh] 21 Oct. 2001
(a paragraph in a gang review).
20. Robert A. Weiler, Bettcndorf Public Library Information
Center online, 2001 ("the definitive account" with "stunning color plates").
21. Anon., First Things (Feb. 2002): 71. ("The Stranger from
Paradise is a splendid account and a fitting capstone to
Bentley's lifetime of Blake scholarship.")
22. Mark S. Lussier, Wordsworth Circle 32 (2001 [i.e., April
2002]): 182-83. ("Bentley has performed the highest service imaginable" for Blake scholars in "this impressive and
summative master work" which evokes "continual excitement and perpetual discovery"; "One cannot ask more of a
biography or more from a biographer")
23. Keri Davies, Blake Journal No. 7 (2002): 62-70. ("Despite my caveats . . . Bentley's book accumulates into an
impressive self-portrait of Blake . . . thorough, usually reliable, fully documented and closely detailed" [69].)
24. Juan Manuel Vial, "Quien Es: Personajes BiogiMti.is:
William Blake: Entre el cielo y el infierno / 1757-1827" El
Mercuno y La Nacion (2002), online <www.alterguia.com/
quien_es/blake.htm> in Spanish ("una monumental
biografia").
§Billigheimer, Rachel V "Conflict and Conquest: Creation,
Emanation and the Female Will in William Blake's Mythology." Modern Language Studies 30 (2000): 93-120.
Volume 35, No. 1 (Summer 2001)
2. Michael Ferber. "Blake for Children." 22-24. (The same
subject is dealt with in his "Not for the Kiddies . . . ''Academe 87.3 [July-Aug. 2001]: 50-52.)
Volume 35, No. 3 (Winter [ 11 March] 2002)
1. *Martin Butlin. "New Risen from the Grave: Nineteen
Unknown Watercolors by William Blake." 68-73. (These
19 designs for Blair's Grave [1805] constitute "arguably the
most important" Blake discovery since 1863; 4 of the previously unknown designs are reproduced.)
2. *Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi. "An Inquiry into
William Blake's Method of Color Printing." 74-103, with
36 monochrome reproductions, mostly of plate fragments.
(The chief evidence used by Michael Phillips in William
Blake: The Creation of the Songs From Manuscript to Illuminated Printing [2000] and in the catalogue of the Tate
exhibition [2000]—pinholes in Songs (T1) and printing of
ink text before colored design in one plate of Songs (E)—
does not exist. "Either Blake used two-pull printing or he
did not. All the material evidence indicates that he did not,
with the single . . . exception" of "Nurses Song" in Songs
(E). "An online version of this article, with 81 color illustrations, is . . . at http://www.blakequarterly.org")
Volume 35, No. 4 (Spring [May] 2002)
1. 'Robert N. Essick. "Blake in the Marketplace, 2001." 108130. (A customarily magisterial and apparently comprehensive survey; the reduced black-and-white reproductions
of the newly discovered Urizen pi. 3 and Europe pi. 13-14
are reproduced "in glorious color on the journal's web site"
<www.blakequarterly.org>; an "Appendix: New Information on Blake's Engravings" contains addenda for his The
Separate Plates of William Blake [1983] and William Blake's
Commercial Book Illustrations [1991].)
Reviews
2. *R. Paul Yoder. Review of Henry Summerfield, A Guide
to the Books of William Blake (1998). 130-32. (The book is
"generally sound and informative.")
3. Bo Ossian Lindberg. Review of David Bindman and
Simon Baker, William Blake 1757-1827: Catalogue of the
exhibition at the Helsinki Citv Art Museum, 11 April-25
June 2000. 132-35. (The exhibition was "a tremendous success," and the catalogue is "excellent")
Summer 2003
Volume 36, No. 1 (Summer [15 July] 2002)
1. G. E. Bentley, Jr., with the assistance of Keiko Aoyama for
Japanese publications. "William Blake and His Circle: A
Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2001." 4-37.
2. *Gert Schiff [ed. M. D. P(aley)]. "The Night of Enitharmons Joy: Catalogue Entry." 38-39. ("The color printed
drawing formerly known as Hecate" should rather be identified as "The Night of Enitharmon's Joy" [Europe, pi. 8];
the entry was translated into Japanese for the catalogue of
the Blake exhibition at the National Museum of Western
Art, Tokyo "of which Dr. Schiff was Commissioner" [BBS
pp. 308-09].)
Volume 36, No. 2 (Fall [November] 2002)
1. Michael Phillips. "Color-Printing Songs of Experience and
Blake's Method of Registration: A Correction." 44-45. (The
"error in my book" is the statement that there are "pinholes" in the Experience prints in the National Gallery of
Canada; there is no pinhole there, but, according to Phillips,
this does not invalidate his theory of two-stage printing of
color prints.)
2. Martin Butlin. "Ts This a Private War or Can Anyone
Join In?': A Plea for a Broader Look at Blake's Color-Printing Techniques." 45-49. (In response to Robert N. Essick
and Joseph Viscomi, "An Inquiry into William Blake's
Method of Color Printing," Blake 35 [2002]: 74-103, concerning one-stage color printing, Butlin suggests that a
broader look may yet justify the theory of two-stage color
printing.)
3. *Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi. "Blake's Method
of Color Printing: Some Responses and Further Observations." 49-64. (A reiteration of their argument, with some
new evidence, presented as "[comments] on Butlin's observations . . . as they arise in his essay " [49]; "An online version of this article, with illustrations in color, is available
on the journal's web site at http://www.blakequarterly.org")
Reviews
4. *G. E. Bentley, Jr. "The Blake Exhibition at Tate Britain,
9 November 2000-11 February 2001, and at the Metropolitan Museum, 27 March-24 June 2001, and their Catalogues."
64-66. (It was "a major exhibition," "mounted with enormous £clat and puffery," and the catalogue is "useful and
responsible" and "very generously illustrated, though the
reproductions vary capriciously in size" [65,66].)
5. Alexander S. Gourlay. Review of Michael Phillips, William Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to
Illuminated Printing (2000). 66-71. ("A significant, albeit
significantly flawed" book, in which some of the evidence
is "grievously misinterpreted," "marred throughout by major and minor errors in interpreting the complex evidence,"
so that "important aspects of its most prominent arguments
are simply wrong" [ 70,68,66,70]. In an "Appendix: Phillips'
Summer 2003
Annotated Edition of Paradise Lost [ed. Richard Bentley
(1732)]" 70-71, he denies convincingly on the basis of the
unblakean handwriting and sentiments "that the poet William Blake had anything to do with this book" [71 ].)
Volume 36, No. 3 (Winter 2002/2003 [10 January 2003])
1. *Christopher Heppner. "Bathsheba Revisited." 76-91. ("I
retract that reading" of Blake's tempera in his Reading Blake's
Designs [1995] "and try again," with extensive use of context but with inconclusive results.)
2. Anon. "Newsletter." 91.
3. G. E. Bentley, Jr. "Richard C. Jackson, Collector of Treasures and Wishes: Walter Pater, Charles Lamb, William
Blake." 92-105. (Bentley has "a persistent suspicion of the
accuracy" of Jackson and of those who made claims on his
behalf respecting his "wonderful combination of trash and
treasures" [96], particularly in "Richard C. Jackson's Blake
Collection" [101 -04], much of which may have derived from
"Jackson's fertile and apparently self-delusive imagination"
[102].)*
Reviews
4. David Minckler. "Review of The Tygers of Wrath. Concert held in conjunction with an exhibition of Blake's works
at Tate Britain. 2 February 2001. Purcell Room, South Bank
Centre, London." 106-07. (A somewhat ambivalent account
of the performances, which included that by Alan Moore,
novelist, "who actually believes himself to be the reincarnation of Blake," who read "'Angel Passage,' his own densely
evocative, epic description of Blake's life in blank verse (a
recording is available . . . at www.stevenseverin.com).")
5. Nelson Hilton. Review of An Oxford Companion to the
Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832. Ed. Iain McCalman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 107-11.
(There appears to be no entry about Blake.)
The Blake Journal
No. 7 ([October] 2002)
1. Michael Grenfell and Andrew Solomon. "Editorial." 3.
2. Anon. "The Blake Society at St James's." 4.
3. Anon. "Sir Peter Parker, President of the Blake Society
1997-2002." 5. (An obituary.)
4. *Michael Grenfell. "John Cowper Powys and William
Blake." 7-17. (Powys wrote: "There is no poet perhaps who
gives such an impression of primordial creative force as
Blake" [10].)
26. See also G. E. Bentley, Jr., "R.C. Jackson—A Wild Goose
Chase?" Camberwell Quarterly: The Newsletter of the Camberwell
Society No. 130 (Jan. 2001): 9 (a letter of inquiry published without
GEB's foreknowledge in a journal of which he had never heard), and
Stephen Humphrey, "R.C. Jackson," Camberwell Quarterly No. 131
(March 2001): 6 (some facts about him, in response to the letter from
Bentley).
5. Andrew Solomon. "Romney's Drawings: Their Influence
on Blake." 18-23. (The one page of text suggests that "we
may particularly associate with Blake" the "Neo-classical"
style of Romney's drawings.)
6. *G. E. Bentley, Jr. '"My name is Legion: for we are many':
William Blake in London 1740-1830." 24-32. ("Legions of
'William Blake's . . . seemed to swarm in every profession
and neighbourhood of London" [32]. The "voluminous
notes and appendices with detailed information on individuals and sources... [omitted here] can be obtained from
Andrew Solomon" [and from BR [2] 829-46].)
7. *Jason Whittaker. "Newton's Compass: From Blake to
Britart." 33-45. (On Blake's influence on some twentiethcentury British artists.)
8. * Andrew Solomon. "Blake and Music." 46-49. (British
subscribers received "a 'home recording'" of some songs
from Blake's time and late nineteenth-century settings of
his poems.)
9. Anon. "Linda Landers." 50. (A reproduction of "'Welcome to My Garden,' a linocut inspired by the stories of
William Blake and his wife in the tree[/] of their garden;
and 'The Shepherd Boy,' based around [sic] Blake's'universal man.'")
10. Christopher Rubinstein. "The Mental Traveller and Lyrical Ballads 1798." 51-61. ("A provisional argument for The
Mental Traveller as deriving from Lyrical Ballads" in the context of Blake's 1804 trial [56].)
Reviews
11. Keri Davies. Review of G. E. Bentley, Jr., The Stranger
from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (2001). 62-70.
("Despite my caveats . . . Bentley's book accumulates into
an impressive self-portrait of Blake . . . thorough, usually
reliable, fully documented and closely detailed" [69].)
12. Sunao Vagabond [Andrew Vernede]. Review of Patrick
Menneteau, La Folic dans la pocsic tic \ Villiam Blake; Reflet des
enjeivcgnoseologiques de In critique littcraire (1999). 70-73.
13. Michael Grenfell. "Blake on CD!" Reviews of Mike
Westbrook, "Glad day: Settings of William Blake," Enja
Records ENJA 93672 http://www.enjarecords.com, and of
John Taverner, "Eternity's Sunrise," The Academy of Ancient Music, Harmonia mundi 907231 http://www.
harmoniamundi.com. 74-76. ("Each piece on the [2
Westbrook] CDs is a rich tapestry of sound," and "The [Taverner] CD is certainly an experience" [75, 76].)
Bloom, Harold. "William Blake." 1-119 of The Visionary
('ompany: A Reading ofEnglish Romantic Poetry. (New York,
196] ) B. (Garden City [NY], 1963) 1-130. C. The Visionary Company. Revised and Enlarged Edition. (Ithaca [NY]
and London, 1971) 5-123,471<BB#1232> D. §LosPocta>
The section on The Four Zoas was reprinted in Northrop
Frye, ed., Blake: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, 1965) Twentieth Century Views. <BB #1643>
The 1961 edition is excerpted in Ratomir Ristic, Introducing William Blake (1996) <Blake (2001 )>.
*Bloom, Harold. "William Blake (1757-1827)." 696-703,
part of "Lustre 18: William Blake, D.H. Lawrence, Tennessee Williams, Rainer Maria Rilke, Eugenio Montale," in his
Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds
(New York: Warner Books, 2002).
"This book is a continuous protest against historicizing
and contextualizing the imagination of genius." "My reverence for Blake goes back sixty years" (696).
Bokushin: Butigaku Kikan:
Faunus [The Quarterly of Literature]
No. 5 (Jan. 1976) [Special Issue:] William Blake yogen: to
shinpi no sho: William Blake: [The Books of Prophecy and
Mystery]. In Japanese. <BBS p. 421>
14. M. L.Cazamian. "Rinritosei nokachi: shoki yogensho
[Values of Ethics and Life: The Early Prophetic Books]."
Tr. Yoshio Hara. 144-49. ([Silently taken from Poemes
choisis, ed. Madeleine L. Cazamian (1943 ff.), chapter 5, not
from Louis Cazamian, Symholisme et Poesie (1947), as
guessed in BB #1366.])
Brook, Clodagh. "Giuseppe Ungaretti: Translator of William Blake." Forum ltalicum 35 (2002): 368-82.
About Ungaretti's faithfulness to Blake.
Bruder, Helen M. William Blake and the Daughters of Albion.
(1997) <Blake (1998)>
Review
5. Jason Whittaker, Romanticism 7.1 (2001): 96-99. (Binder's
"readings... are polemical, provocative, and stimulating" [95].)
*Butlin, Martin. "Word as Image in William Blake." Chapter 13 (207-17) of Romanticism and Millenarianism. Ed. Tim
Fulford. (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)
"Insofar as Blake saw himself as a fount of divine wisdom, word and image—God's word—have become God"
(214).
Cervo, Nathan A. "THE GARDEN OF LOVE." Exphcator
59(2001): 121-22.
About "Thou shalt not."
Visionarios del Romanticismo Ingles. Tr. M. Antolin.
§Chattopadhyay, Debasis. "Blake's Lyrics: 'Plowman in
Darkness'—A Study of Blake's Development as a Lyric
Poet." Rabindra Bharati University Ph.D., 1999. 194 pp.
(Barcelona, 1974) In Spanish. <BBS pp. 415-16> E. §La
Compliant Yisionaria: William Blake. (Buenos Aires:
Adriana Hidalgo editora, 1999) In Spanish.
Chesterton, G. K. "William Blake. (London and New York,
1910) B. * (London, 1920) The Popular Library of Art.
Summer 2003
<BB#1381> C. §(Havertown and Philadelphia, 1973) D.
§(Folcroft, Pennsylvania, 1976) E. §*(Norwood, Pennsylvania, 1977) F. * (Philadelphia, 1978) G. Tr. Francis Bourcier,
Introduction par Francois Riviere (Paris, 1982) In French.
H. Tr. Kii Nakano as "William Blake." Chapter I (71-115)
of William Blake: Robert Browning: G.K. Chesterton:
Chosaku shu (Hyoden hen) 3 [ William Blake: Robert Browning: Collected Writings of G.K. Chesterton Vol. Ill: Critical
Biography]. (Tokyo, 1991) In Japanese. <BBS p. 436> I.
§William Blake. (London: House of Stratus, 2000)
^Connolly, Tristanne J. "William Blake and the Spectre of
Anatomy." 19-42 of Spectres of Romanticism: The Influence
and Anxiety of the British Romantics. Ed. Sharon Ruston
with Assistance by Lidia Garbin. (Lewiston [NY], Queenston [Ontario], Lampeter [Wales]: Edwin Mellen Press,
1999) Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Romantic Reassessment No. 153. <Blake (2001§, 2002)>
It grew into Chapter 2 ("Graphic Bodies" [25-72]) of her
William Blake and the Body (2002).
§Chiramel, P. Jose. "Blake's Published 'Theory of Art' and
His Praxis." Aligarh Journal of English Studies 17 (1995):
25-47.
§Corti, Claudia. "Dell'infinito al finito: Le strano percorso
iniziatico del 'Thel' di W. Blake." Rivista di Letterature
Moderne e Comparate 53 (2000): 147-65. In Italian.
On mysticism.
Clark, Steve, and David Worrall, ed. Blake in the Nineties.
(1999) <Blake (2001)>
Review
2. Morton D. Paley, Romanticism 8.1 (2002): 90-93 (especially the essays by Essick, Viscomi, and Keri Davies).
§Corti, Claudia. "William Blake, owero: C'e passione e
passione." 117-33 of Le passioni tra ostensione e riserbo. Ed.
Romana Rutelli. (Pisa: ETS, 2000) Memorie e atti di convegni. In Italian.
Compares Blake with Hume's "Of the Passions."
*Cleadell, Colin. "Blake's lost work found 165 years on."
Telegraph 31 Jan. 2002.
About the rediscovery of Blake's watercolors for Blair's
Grave.
Csikos, Dora. "Is He the Divine Image? Blake's Luvah and
Vala." AnaChronisT 1996: a collection of papers [from the]
Department of English Studies, School of English and
American Studies, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest
[Hungary] ([1996?]): 162-84.
An "essentially psychological" argument based on " [Lipot]
Szondi's fate analysis (commonly known as Schicksal analysis)" (162,173).
§Colebrook, Claire. "The End of Redemption and the Redemption of Ends: Apocalypse and Enlightenment in
Blake's Prophecies." SoRA 27, No. 1 (March 1994): 79-92.
§Connolly, Tristanne. "Miscarriage Images in Blake." Romanticism 7.2.
"Portions of Chapter 4 ['Embodiment: Reuben' (95124)]" in her William Blake and the Body (2002) were first
published in it.
*Connolly, Tristanne J. William Blake and the Body.
(Houndmills, Basingstoke, and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2002) 8", xvii, 249 pp.; ISBN: 0333968484.
Her most original piece of information is that "Cath.e
Blake" (who may or may not be the poet's wife—no other
detail is given) is listed as a patient in the minutes of the
weekly Board of the British Lying-in Hospital, Endel Street,
Holborn on 26 Aug. 1796 (108), perhaps indicating that
she had had a miscarriage.
The work is clearly related to her Cambridge dissertation
with the same title (1999); Chapter 2 ("Graphic Bodies"
[25-72]) grew out of "William Blake and the Spectre of
Anatomy," Spectres ofRomanticism: The Influence and Anxiety of the British Romantics, ed. Sharon Ruston and Lidia
Garbin (1999), and "Portions of Chapter 4 ['Embodiment:
Reuben' (95-124)] were first published as "Miscarriage
Images in Blake,"Romanticism 7.2 [n.d.].
Summer 2003
Csikos, Dora. "Narrative Technique in The Four ZoasT
AnaChronisT 1997: a collection of papers from the Department of English Studies, School of English and American
Studies, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest [Hungary]
([1997?]): 29-38.
"Once we accept McGann's contentions, all the formal
problems discussed so far seem to be resolved, the diagrammatic design of The Four Zoas becomes deliberate architecture" (36).
§Csikos, Dora. "'Urizen Who Was Faith and Certainty Is
Changed to Doubt': The Changing Portrayal of Urizen."
Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 3, No. 2
([Debrecen, Hungary] 1997): 131-59.
^Denize, Joseph. "La Nature naturante: Blake et la
Bhagavad-Gita." Rivista di Letterature Moderne e Comparate
53 ([Pisa] 2000): 381-407. In French.
Dent, Shirley, and Jason Whittaker. Radical Blake: Influence
and Affinities from 1827. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) 8°, xi, 237 pp.; ISBN:
0333986458.
"Throughout this book, we have tried to show how Blake's
art has inspired and motivated artists, poets, novelists, filmmakers, composers and political activists" (197).
Dhar, Subir. Burning Bright: William Blake and the Poetry
of Imagination. (Kolkata [Calcutta] India: G. J. Book Society, 2001) 8", 240 pp.; no ISBN.
An analysis of Blake's poems in terms of "Blake's ideas
about reason and imagination," tracing "an initial stage of
unbridled enthusiasm for the imagination [to 1794] . . . ; a
darker, pessimistic interregnum during which the imagination was regarded as fallen [1794-97]; and a final stage
of a realization of both reason and imagination as redemptive potentia [1797-1827]" (10, 15).
"This book started out as a doctoral dissertation" ([5]).
§Dhar, Subir. "Reading Between the Lines: Interlinear Iconography in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and HellT
Dibrugarh University Journal of English Studies No. 12
(1996-97): 5-12.
§Dhar, Subir. "William Blake and the Experience of'Experience.'" Rabindra Bharati University Journal of the Department of English 6: issue on Re-assessing Romanticism:
Millennial Perspectives (2000-01): 131-42.
Eaves, Morris. "Graphically: Multimedia Fables for 'Textual' Critics." 99-122 of Reimagining Tcxtuality: Textual
Studies in the Late Age of Print. Ed. Elizabeth Bergmann
Loizeaux and Neil Freistat. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002)
It is largely about editing Blake, especially in "Blake's Miscalculation and Victorian Attitudes" (105-08), "Bringing Up
Blake" (108-12), "Dead Man, Walking" (112-14), and "The
Imagination Which Liveth Forever" (114-16, about Ackroyd's biography).
* Eaves, Morris, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. "The
William Blake Archive: The Medium, When the Millennium
is the Message." Chapter 14 (219-33) of Romanticism and
Millenarianism. Ed. Tim Fulford. (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)
It is "an outline [of] the discoveries we have made and
the new things that are now possible" (224).
Engelstein, Stefani Brooke. "Organs of meaning: The 'natural' human body in literature and science of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." DAI 62 (2001):
2412A. Chicago Ph.D., 2001. 234 pp.
She "juxtaposes scientific texts with the work of Heinrich
von Kleist, William Blake, and E. T. A. Hoffmann"; chapter
I is on Blake, obstetrics, and regeneration.
shot, Hampshire: Scolar Press, 2001) The Nineteenth Century Series. <Blake (2002)§, misattributed to Thomas
McFarland>
An exploration of the concepts of "the act of utterance,
dialogic interaction or address, and the creation of places
—with the goal of identifying some distinctively Romantic
ways in which . . . utterance itself takes, and makes, place";
the titles of Jerusalem and Patmos "must finally be read as a
reference to the speech act that is the poem, but simultaneously reliteralized as the name of a place" (178, 180).
*Evans, Mark. "Blake, Calvert—and Palmer? The Album
of Alexander Constantine Ionides." Burlington Magazine
144, No. 1194 (Sept. 2002): 539-49.
The album contains 17 of Blake's Virgil woodcuts (probably those printed by Calvert in 1830), 11 of 15 known
Calvert prints, and "previously unknown wood engravings
by an unidentified member of 'The Ancients'" (perhaps
Samuel Palmer) (541) which were probably acquired by
Ionides from his art-instructor and friend Edward Calvert;
the album was bought by the Victoria & Albert Museum in
2000.
*Ferber, Michael. "Not for the Kiddies: Forget about literature. A commercial publisher finds Blake's poems unsuitable
for children." Academe: Bulletin of the American Association
of University Professors 87.3 (July-Aug. 2001): 50-52.
In the edition of Blake for children which they commissioned, a publisher (who is never named, alas!) would not
allow "London" (because of the word "harlot") or "The
Little Black Boy" (because he's the wrong color) or "The
Divine Image" (because it's too religious) or "The Little
Vagabond" (because it names "beer").
The subject is the same as in his "Blake for Children,"
Blake 35 (2001): 22-24, though it is not referred to in Academe.
Ferrara, Mark S. "Ch'an Buddhism and the Prophetic Poems of William Blake." Journal of Chinese Philosophy 24
(1997): 59-73. Also on the web at www.american-buddha.
com/chan.blake.htm <Blake (2002)§>
§Fleissner, Robert F. "Enter the Third World: Yeats's 'Second Coming' Even of a Blakean Tiger-like Image." Aligarh
Journal of English Studies 2] (1999): 11-19.
"Freed-Isserow, Eugenie. "'This Free Born Joy': William
Blake's Vision of Emancipation." EAR: Englisli Academy Review [of Southern Africa] 17 (2000): 111-30.
In Visions, "Oothoon voices the right not onlv of woman,
but of every human being, both to personal autonomy and to
in imaginativefteedoniiin lite, in love and in thought. This is
Esterhammer, Angela. "Locationary Acts: Blake's Jerusalem and Holderlin's Patmos." ('.hapter 13(178-90) of Plac
ingand Displacing Romanticism. Ed. Peter Kitson. (Alder-
Blake's 'vision of emancipation'"; "Man-Wollstonecraft's denigration especially of physical sensation and emotion, in order
to uphold the primacy of the Reason, was completely unac-
Summer 2003
ceptable to him," "though he was sympathetic to her feminism, and admired her courage" (113, 122, 121).
Freeman, Kathryn S. Blake's Nostos. (1997) <Blake (1997)§,
(1998)>
Review
5. Mary-Kelly Persyn, European Romantic Review 10 (1999):
393-97 ("highly valuable" [397]).
§Friedlander, Edward Robert, M.D. "William Blake's
Milton: Meaning and Madness." <www.pathguy.com/blake/
blakemil.txt> [before 2003].
*Fujita, Hiroko. "Kami to Akuma wo Syocho suru Tori:
Blake no Shi ni Mirareru Milton no Eikyo [A Bird as a Symbol of God and Devil: Milton's Influence on Blake's Poetry]." Rikkyo Review [St. Paul's English Review) 31 (2002):
37-60. In Japanese.
Glausser, Wayne. Locke and Blake. (1998) <Blake (1999)>
Review
2. Kathryn S. Freeman, European Romantic Review 10
(1999): 121-26.
Gleckner, Robert F. "Blake, Skelton, and Diodorus Siculus."
USF Language Quarterly 16.3-4 (1978): 25, 56. <Blake
(2002)§>
John Skelton (? 1460-1529) mistranslated the Greek text
of Diodorus Siculus, The Bibliotheca Historica, to create a
flying island of Hiperboreans who worship Apollo, but
Blake cannot have used the translation for his Island in the
Moon as it was not printed until 1957.
Gompf, Michelle Leigh. "Coexisting Contraries: Women's
Sexuality in Blake's'Milton'and'Jerusalem.'" DAI62 (2001):
2124A. North Carolina (Greensboro) Ph.D., 2001.
Especially on Ololon in Milton and Enitharmon, Vala, and
Jerusalem in Jerusalem.
Goslee, Nancy Moore. "'Soul' in Blake's Writing: Redeeming the Word." Wordsworth Circle 33 (2002): 18-23.
She focuses on Blake's works of the 1790s.
*Gourlay, Alexander S., ed. Prophetic Character: Essays on
William Blake in Honor of John E. Grant. (West Cornwall,
CT: Locust Hill Press, 2002) 8°, 394 pp.; ISBN: 0933951965.
It consists of
1. [Alexander Gourlay]."Foreword"(xiii-xviii) (about Jack's
career).
2. Anon. "Biographical Note." xix.
3. Anon. "A Chronological Checklist of Publications by John
E. Grant." xxi-xxvi.
4. Alexander S. Gourlay. "Introduction." xxvii-xxxii.
5. *Stephen C. Behrendt. "The Evolution of Blake's Pestilence." 3-26.
Suminer 2003
6. *J. M. Q. Davies. "Variations on the Fall in Blake's Designs for Young's Night Thoughts" 27-50.
7. Michael Ferber. "In Defense of Clods." 51-66.
8. Everett C. Frost. "The Education of the Prophetic Character: Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as a Primer
in Visionary Autography." 67-95.
9. * Alexander S. Gourlay. "'Idolatry or Polities': Blake's Chaucer, the Gods of Priam, and the Powers of 1809." 97-147.
10. *Catherine L. McClenahan. "Blake's Erin, The United
Irish and 'Sexual Machines.'" 149-70.
11. *Jon Mee. "'As portentous as the written wall': Blake's
Illustrations to Night Thoughts!' 171-203. ("This essay attempts to understand Blake's illustrations to Night Thoughts
in terms of competing ways—both verbal and visual—of
'imaging the unseen'"; "Blake considerably extends the
meaning of Young's'enthusiasm'" [172, 171n].)
12. * Jennifer Davis Michael. "Blake's Feet: Toward a Poetics of Incarnation." 205-24. ("Blake's symbolic use of feet,
beginning with Poetical Sketches, is intrinsic to his artistic
project, fusing spiritual, sexual, and poetic acts into a single
member. This fusion culminates in Jerusalem" [206].)
13. * Peter Otto. "From the Religious to the Psychological
Sublime: The Fate of Young's Night Thoughts in Blake's The
Four Zoas." 225-62. ("Where Young's religious sublime offers eternal rest, Blake's sublime demands endless activity
— Blake remains wedded to a religious rhetoric of apocalypse and resurrection" [260].)
14. Morton D. Paley. "William Blake and Dr. Thornton's
'Tory Translation' of the Lord's Prayer." 263-86.
15. G. A. Rosso. "The Religion of Empire: Blake's Rahab in
its Biblical Contexts." 287-326. (A learned essay demonstrating that "By merging two symbolic streams, the antiempire Rahab dragon with the collusive Rahab harlot, Blake
creates a composite figure of tremendous depth and range
. . . . a study of Rahab symbolism in the epics shows that
Blake's politics deepened and broadened rather than faded
away or became quiescent after 1800" [320].)
16. Sheila A. Spector. "A Numerological Analysis of Jerusalem" 327-49. (In Jerusalem, Blake "seems to have predicated his total structure on the number 100" [330].)
17. Richard J. Squibbs. "Preventing the Star-Led Wizards:
Blake's Europe and Popular Astrology." 351-85. ("Europe is
primarily concerned with showing how astrology and astronomy have corrupted popular prophecy in the 1790s"
[377].)
*Grant, John E. "The Powers of 'Death' in Blake's Night
Thoughts Engravings." 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era. Vol. 7: Special Feature:
"Death and Dying in the Early Modern Era." (2002) 257-80.
"Blake addresses himself as an engraver" to Young's "unacknowledged idolization of death" (258).
Green, Matthew. "Disruptions of Identity: Points of Intersection between Blake's Urizen Books and Cognitive Sci-
ence." Psyart An Online Journal for Psychological Study of
the Arts (22 July 2002) <www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/
2002/green01.htm>.
*Grossman, Carol. "The Trianon Press's William Blake's
Water-Colour Designs for the Poems of Thomas Gray."
Printing History 21(2001): 19-24, 29-31, 33-36.
Gives a history of Arnold Fawcus (its maker), his Trianon
Press, and the Gray volume (1972), which is "ranked with
the finest printed books of the twentieth century" (19). There
were up to 40 stencils for each of its drawings, with perhaps
a million applications of color for the 400 copies manufactured.
Hecimovich, Gregg A. "'With pale blake I write tintingface':
The Bounding Line of James Joyce's Aesthetic." James Joyce
Quarterly 36 (1999): 889-904.
"Joyce appears to have been greatly influenced by Blake's
aesthetic vision . . . throughout his career" (890).
Hobson, Christopher Z. The Chained Boy: Ore and Blake's
Idea of Revolution. (1999) <Blake (2000)>
Reviews
1. Jacqueline DiSalvo, Studies in Romanticism 40 (Fall 2001
[Feb. 2002]): 462-65 ("one cannot help but be challenged
by the intellectual power, lucid writing and passionate engagement of the book" [465]).
2. Amanda Barry, Wordsworth Circle 32 (2001): 183-84
(praise for "the extreme care the author takes in describing
Blake's growing interest in the subject of homosexuality").
Hoerner, Frederick Christian."Figures Bearing Sway: Milton,
Romanticism, and Poetic Transmission." DAI 58 (1997):
2668A. Texas (Austin) Ph.D., 1997.
Includes Visions of the Daughters of Albion.
*H6ltgen, Karl Joseph. "William Blake and the Emblem Tradition." Online 2002 at http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/
artic22/hoeltgen/2_2002.html#embi
Honour, Hugh. Romanticism. (New York, Hagerstown, San
Francisco, London, 1979) <BBS p. 513> B. Elromanticismo.
(Madrid: Alianza Editorial) Alianza Forma, 20. 297-304. In
Spanish.
Hutchings, Kevin D. "'Everything That Lives': Anthropocentrism, Ecology, and The Book of Their Wordsworth Circle
28 (1997): 166-77. <Blake (1998)>
It grew into Chapter 2: "Anthropocentrism, Nature's 1 \ on
omy, and The Book ofThel" of his Imagining Nature: Blake's
Environmental Poetics (76-113).
"Hutchings, Kevin. Imagining Nature: Blake's Environmental Poetics. (Montreal, Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill-
Queen's University Press, 2002) 8°, xiv, 255 pp.; ISBN:
0773523421.
This "ecocritical study of Blake's work" (36) "grew out of
work originally conducted" for his McMaster doctoral dissertation (1998) called "Imagining Nature: Blake's vision
of materiality," DAI 60 (1998): 3374-75A. Chapter 2, "Anthropocentrism, Nature's Economy, and The Book ofThel"
(76-113) is expanded from "'Everything That Lives': Anthropocentrism, Ecology, and The Book of Thel" Wordsworth Circle 28 (1997): 166-77, and Chapter 3, "The Nature of Infinity: Milton's Environmental Poetics," (114-52)
is abridged in Nineteenth-Century Contexts (in press).
Hutchings, Kevin Douglas. "Imagining Nature: Blake's vision of materiality." DAI 60 (1998): 3374-75A. McMaster
Ph.D., 1998. <Blake (2001 )>
It grew into his Imagining Nature: Blake's Environmental
Poetics (2002).
§Hutchings, Kevin. "Pastoral, Ideology, and Nature in William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 9,
No. 1 (2002): 1-24.
Ikegame, Naoko. "William Blake no Geijutsu Kyoiku Shiso
ni kansuru Ichi Kosatsu—Reynolds no Geijutsu rri kansuru
Koensyu he no Kakikomi wo Chushin ni [A Study of
Thoughts on Education of Art in William Blake—On Annotations to The Discourses of Reynolds]." Ochanomizu Joshi
Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyu Kiyo: Ochanomizu University Studies in Arts and Culture 54 (2001): 177-86. In Japanese.
§Ikegame, Naoko. "Yanagi Muneyoshi no William Blake ni
okeru Seimei—Kosei toChokkan wo meguru Shiso kara [Life
in William Blake by Muneyoshi Yanagi—Thoughts concerning Individuality and Intuition]." Ningen Bunka Ronso [Journal of the Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences,
Ochanomizu University] no. 4 (2001): 177-86. In Japanese.
*Imaizumi, Yoko. Blake Shuseisareru Onna—Shi to E no
Eukugo Geijutsu: Blake's Re-vision of the Fetnale. (Tokyo:
Sairyusha, 2001) xiii + 315 pp.; ISBN: 4882026929. In Japanese.
Reviews
1. Keiko Anzai, Eigo Scinen: Rising Generation 147, No. 3
(2001): 66.
lacobson, Howard. "Blake's Doors of Perception."
and Queries 247 [N.S. 49] (2002): 454-55.
Sources for the idea from Lucretius and Cicero.
Notes
"Jones, John H. "Printed Performances and Reading The
Bookfs] of Urizen: Blake's Bookmaking Process and the
Summer 2003
Transformation of Late Eighteenth-Century Print Culture."
Colby Quarterly 35 (1999): 73-89. <Blake (2002)§>
"Urizen can be seen not only as a critique of the 'standard'
presentation of the Bible... but also as a critique of the potential for authorial power that print technology can foster
through its ability to mass-produce exact copies of a text" (74).
Juninus. "On Splendour of Colours, &c." Repository of Arts,
Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics
II (June 1810, Supplement) 404-09 <BB#A1980>; IV (Sept.
1810) 130-31. <BBS p. 529)>
The series "On Splendour of Colours" begins each issue
"of The Repository of Arts from 1809 through 1815," and
"The mysterious Juninus showed surprisingly intimate
knowledge of Blake" (Blake Records Supplement [1988] 62).
A series so prominently displayed in some eighty issues is
likely to have been written by the editor, who for March
1809 through December 1828 was Frederick Shoberl (17751853). He was an industrious man of letters, a founder of
The New Monthly Magazine (1814), editor of Ackermann's
Forget Me Not (1822-34) and Juvenile Forget Me Not (182832), and anonymous compiler, with John Watkins, of the
Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors (1816), in which
the Blake entry <BB #2929> is strikingly well informed.
§Kaplan, Nancy. "Blake's Problem and Ours: Some Reflections on the Image and the Word." Readerly Writerly Texts
3, No. 2 (Summer 1996): 115-33. <Blake (1999)> B.
§"Blake's Problem and Ours: Some Reflections on the Image and the Word." 25-43 of The Emerging Cyberculture:
Literacy, Paradigm, and Paradox. Ed. Stephanie B. Gibson
and Ollie O. Oviedo. (Cresskill [NJ]: Hampton, 2000)
Hampton Press Communication Series.
§Kawasaki, Noriko. "Satan no Chokoku—Blake no Milton
ni tsuite (13) [The Transcendence of Satan—on Blake's
Milton}!' Gifu Shiritsu Joshi Tanki Daigaku Kenkyu Kiyo
[Bulletin of Gifu City Women's Junior College] no. 51 (2001):
33-40. In Japanese.
Nos. 1-11 are in Nos. 39-49 (1989-99).
*Keir, John. "The Grasshopper and the Ant in Blake's 'The
Fly.'" ELN 38.3 (March 2001): 56-68.
The poem has two perspectives.
§ Keith, Jennifer. "The Feet of Salvation in Blake's Milton."
Bulletin de la Societe d'Etudes Anglo-Americaines des XVII'
etXVIIF Siecles No. 45 (November 1995): 51-67.
*Komaromy, Zsolt. "Echoing Innocence: The Figures of
Memory and Echo in Blakean Pastoral." AnaChronisT 1998:
Essays... [from the] Department of English Studies, School
of English and American Studies, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest [Hungary] ([1998?]): 75-118.
Summer 2003
Blake "is compelled" to push "poetry beyond the limits
[of] his predecessors" because of "his urge to divorce imagination from memory" (118).
§Kono, Rikyu. "William Blake to Shinran 'Kyosei' ni tsuite
no Hikaku Sisou no Tachiba kara no Kosatsu [William Blake
and Shinran: On 'Coexistence' from the Viewpoint of Comparative Philosophy]." Indo Tetsugaku Bukkyogaku [Hokkaido Journal of Indological and Buddhist Studies] no. 16
(2001): 244-61. In Japanese.
Kruger, Kathryn Sullivan. "The Loom of Language and the
Garment of Words in William Blake's The Four Zoas!' Chapter 4 (87-107,158-64) of her Weaving the Word: The Metaphor ics of Weaving and Female Textual Production. (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated
University Presses, 2001)
"In The Four Zoas ... Blake stumbles onto the powerful
metaphor of weaving which has buried in its history the
privilege of female divinity" (107).
§Kuduk, Stephanie. "'A Sword of a Song': Swinburne's Republican Aesthetic in Song before Sunrise." Victorian Studies 43 (2001): 253-78.
§Kuntz, Paul Grimley. "William Blake and the Ten Commandments." Soundings 83 (2000): 427-51.
"Lee, Debbie. "Intimacy as Imitation: Monkeys in Blake's
Engravings for Stedman's Narrative" Chapter 4 (66-119,
238-43) of her Slavery and the Romantic
Imagination.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)
"I read the Stedman plates as being primarily a statement of
Blake's artistic purpose" (96); his monkey plates are "suggestively ironic" or "mock-mimicry," according to Professor Lee.
It is excerpted as "Johnson, Stedman, Blake and the Monkeys," Wordsworth Circle 33 (2002): 116-19 (see Joseph
Johnson below).
§Lombardo, Agostino. "Ungaretti e Blake." In Giuseppe
Ungaretti 1888-1970: Atti del convegno internazionale di
Studi. Ed. Alexandra Zingone. (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1995). In Italian.
Lovasz, Laura Elizabeth. "Literate gentlemen and the viewing masses: The antagonism between seeing and reading in
the Romantic period." DAI63 (2002): 196A. Indiana Ph.D.,
2002. 183 pp.
Chapter 4 is on Blake's Job.
Lundeen, Kathleen. Knight of the Living Dead: William Blake
and the Problem of Ontology. (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna
University Press; London: Associated University Presses,
2000) <Blake (2002)>
Review
1. §David Punter, BARS No. 22 (Sept. 2002): 27-29.
Lundin, Roger. "On the Vision of William Blake." Mars Hill
Audio Journal: A bimonthly audio magazine of contemporary culture and Christian conviction 51 ([Charlottesville,
VA] July-August 2001): Disc 2.
An interview about Blake's place in cultural history, stressing Christian fundamentalism.
*Macsok, Marta. "Dante Revisited: The Vision of Paolo and
Francesca in Blake's and D. G. Rossetti's Interpretation."
AnaChronisT 1998: Essays . . . [from the] Department of
English Studies, School of English and American Studies,
Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest [Hungary] ([1998?]):
119-32.
"The Dante illustrations were equally significant in Blake's
and Rossetti's careers" (123).
§Madariaga, Salvador de. Shelley and Calderon and Other
Essays on English and Spanish Poetry. (London: Constable
and Co., 1920) B. §Ensayos Anglo-Espaholes. (Madrid:
Atenea, 1922) In Spanish. C. (Madrid: Atenea, 1992)
Autores Espanoles Volumen 23 Ensayos y C. 3. In Spanish.
In the 1992 publication, in an essay entitled "Lirica Popular Espanola Conferencia Dada en la Asociaci6n AngloEspanola de Londres," is a section (133-40) comparing the
lyrics of Blake, a "gran figura de la poesia Englesa" (133),
with Spanish popular poetry, including translations of a
few of Blake's lyrics. The Spanish translation (1922) is
slightly reduced from that in English.
Madariaga was influential in spreading the reputation of
Blake in Spain.
Marsh, Nicholas. William Blake: The Poems. (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2001) 8", 253 pp. of text + 8 blank pp.; no plate;
ISBN: 03333914566x and 0333914678.
A guide for students ("Your first job is to study the text"
[241 ]), with poem by poem analyses of Songs (3-177) plus
bits from Thel, Urizen, and Milton (178-93), with snippets
on "Blake's Life and Work" (197-219) and "A Sample of
Critical Views" of Erye, Erdman, Middleton Murry, Nelson
Hilton, and Camille Paglia(!) (220-40).
*McLane, Maureen. "Ballads and Bards: British Romantic
Orality." Modern Philology 98 (2001): 423-43.
About Songs of Innocence (Section 1: "From Piping to
Printing: Blake's Allegory of Poetic Meditation"[427-32]),
Childe Harold, and Lyrical Ballads.
§McQuail, Josephine A. "Passion and Mysticism in William Blake." Modem language Studies 30 (2000): 121-34.
§Medworth, Fred. Article on Blake. Sydney Morning Herald 10 Sept. 1949.
On Blake's Dante drawings from the National Gallery of
Victoria exhibited in the State Gallery of New South Wales
(Sydney).
Mellor, Anne K. "Blake, the Apocalypse and Romantic
Women Writers." Chapter 9 (139-52) of Romanticism and
Millenarianism. Ed. Tim Fulford. (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)
Only Joanna Southcott, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The
Last Man (1826), and Mary Ann Browne, "A World without Water" (1832) "among the many women writers I have
been reading from the Romantic period engaged in such
apocalyptic thinking" (140). The essay is scarcely related
to Blake.
Menneteau, Patrick. La Folie dans la poesie de William Blake;
Reflet des enjeux gnoseologiqides de la critique litteraire. (1999)
<Blake (200l)>
Review
1. Sunao Vagabond [Andrew Vernede], Blake Journal No. 7
(2002): 70-73.
§Menneteau, Patrick. "Vie, formes et lumiere dans l'oeuvre
de William Blake." Bulletin de la Societe d'Etudes AngloAmericaines des XVII' etXVIIP Siecles (Sept. 1999): 211 -22.
In French.
*Minton, David. "William Blake: Innocence and Experience—Part 1: Without contraries is no progression [ Part 2:
Love! Sweet Love! Was thought a crime—] [Part 3: Love
seeketh only Self to please And builds a Hell in Heavens
despite] [Part 4: The Devil's Advocate]." Kanto Gabon
Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyo [Bulletin of Kanto Gakuin University Society of Humanities] no. 91 (2000): 1-52,26 plates;
no. 92 (2000): 37-134, 37 plates; no. 93 (2001): 101-45, 16
plates; no. 94 (2001): 25-63.
Mitchell, Sebastian. "'But cast their eyes on these little
wretched Beings': The Innocence and Experience of Children in the Late Eighteenth Century." New Formations: A
Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics 42: The Ruins of Childhood (2000): 115-30.
Ostensibly concerned with chimney sweeps with "some
social accounts of sweeps alongside" Blake's "Chimney
Sweeper" from "Songs of Innocence (1787)" (115), but in
fact about pictures of children, with little on sweeps or
Blake.
^Mitchell, W. J. T. "The Romantic Education of W. J. T.
Mitchell." 34 paragraphs in "The Last Formalist, or W. J. T.
Mitchell as Romantic Dinosaur" <www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/
mitchell/mitch-contents.htmlx Ed. Orrin N. C. Wang.
(August 1997) Romantic Circles Praxis Series.
See also "An Interview with Orrin N. C. Wang," 22 paragraphs.
Summer 2003
Mooney, Patrick. "William Blake's Relevance to the Modern World." Online <www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/
5599/literature/blake.html>.
§Morgenson, Greg. "Children of Hell." Spring: A Journal
of Archetype and Culture 55 (Spring 1994): 18-50.
On family relationships via Freud in Blake's Songs.
*Mulhallen, Karen. "Night Thoughts: Blake's Iconographic
Ruminations (and Iconological Revelations)." AnaChronisT
[Budapest] (2001): 1-18, with 24 plates.
An examination of "a pivotal group of Blake's designs" in
Young's Night Thoughts "placing them in context and examining some of the ways in which Blake used them as a
kind of private notebook" (5,3), particularly with repeated
representations of George III and Napoleon.
Mulvihill, James. "'The History of All Times and Places':
William Blake and Historical Representation in America and
Europe." Clio 29 (2000): 373-94.
"For Blake, the 'what' of history has less to do with 'wars
of sword and fire' than with the mental fight over the limits
of its own understanding" (394).
Munteanu, Anca Violeta. "William Blake and the transformations of the Renaissance notion of melancholy." DAI 60
(1999):4021A. Nebraska Ph.D., 1999. 160 pp.
§Nakayama, Fumi. "William Blake no Tetsuri to Buntai [The
Philosophy and Style of William Blake]." Hiroshima Jogakuin
University [Japan] Ph.D., 11 October 2000. In Japanese.
Navarrete Franco, Ricardo. "Palabra de Blake: subjetividad
y creatividad en Songs of Innocence and of Experience" 6985 of Romanticismo europeo: historia, poetica e influencias.
Ed. Juan Antonio Pacheco and Carmelo Vera Saura. (Sevilla:
Universidad de Sevilla, 1998) Literatura No. 29. In Spanish.
Blake's language "sustituye su organizacion natural por
otra espiritual" (81).
§Nikura, Shunichi. "Blake Oboegaki—Milton Datsukochiku [A Note on Blake—Deconstruction of Milton]."
Gengo Bunka [Language and Culture, Meiji Gakuin University] no. 19 (2002): 12-21. In Japanese.
Nuttall, A. D. The Alternate Trinity: Marlow, Milton and
Blake. (1998) <Blake (\999)>
Review
4. Margaret Anne Doody, "Nuttall and Gnosticism," Raritan:
A Quarterly Review 20.2 (Fall 2000): 106-13 ("none of the
material is very new" [110]).
Oe, Kenzaburo. Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! Tr.
John Nathan. (New York: Grove Press, 2002) 8°, vii, 259
pp.; ISBN: 0802117104.
Summer 2003
An autobiographical novel about the fictional author's
changing relationship with his severely handicapped son
called Eeyore who is not "corrupted by Experience: in
Eeyore, the power of innocence had been preserved" (246).
Blake's influence is pervasive and fundamental. The book
and chapter titles are from Blake, and the fictional author
says: "I have braided my life with my handicapped son and
my thoughts occasioned by reading William Blake"; it is a
"chronicle of William Blake superimposed on my life with
my son" (203, 210).
The novel by the Nobel laureate was first published in
Japanese in 1986.
John Nathan, "Afterword" (251-59) begins with a motto:
"The Imagination is . . . the Human Existence itself.—William Blake."
Oe's relationship with Blake has been extensively examined in Japanese by Keiko Aoyama, Shoichi Matsushima,
Sakaki, Takashi Yamakage, and especially by Oe, "Hyakunen
no 'meiro' to 'shin jidai'—Futatyabi jokyo e (4)," Sekai No.
463 (1984): 254-64 <BBS p. 589> and by Keiko Kobayashi,
"Oe Kenzaburo to Blake [Blake and Kenzaburo Oe],"
Ritsumeikan Bungaku (1988-2001).
Okuma, Akinobu. "William Blake no Shiju no Ningen—
Seiai to Yuai to Gisei [The Fourfold Man in William Blake—
Sexuality, Friendship and Sacrifice]." Tsukuba University
[Japan] Ph.D., 31 December 1995. In Japanese.
Olivero, Federico. "Sulla Tecnica Poetica di William Blake."
1-28 of his Studi sui Romanticisma Inglesa (Bari [Italy],
1914) In Italian. <BB#2323> B. "La tecnica poetica de William Blake." 35-56 of El romanticismo ingles. Tr. Alvaro
Armando Vasseur. Obra inedita en castellano. (Madrid:
Editorial-America, [ 1922]) Biblioteca de Auto res Celebres.
In Spanish.
§Paice, Rosamund A. "William Blake's So-Called Laocobn
Separate Plate: A Study of Contexts and Meanings." Manchester Ph.D., 2002.
§Paley, Morton D. "Blake." The Columbia History of British Poetry. Ed. C. Woodring. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
§Pallichankudyel, Maman P. M. "William Blake's Approach
to Religion as Reflected in his Major Poetry." Dibrugarh
University (Assam) Ph.D., 2002. 385 pp.
Persyn, Mary-Kelly. "'No Human Form but Sexual': Sensibility, Chastity, and Sacrifice in Blake's Jerusalem" European Romantic Review 10 (1999): 53-83.
"The discourse of sacrifice forms an absolutely necessary
subtext to Blake's treatment of gender" (53).
*Pharabod-Ibata, Helene. William Blake: Vinvention d'une
esthetique. These Pour le Doctorat (arrete du 30 mars 1992).
Sous la direction de M. Le Recteur Alain Morvan. Universite
de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III. (Villeneuve d'Ascq:
Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, mars 2001) 4", 495
pp., 35 illustrations (very dim, numbered 1,3-8,13-20,2226, 28, 33-34, 39-41, 43, plus one unnumbered); ISBN:
2284021174. In French.
A three-part study of (I) the complex relationship of
Testhetique blakienne avec l'epistemologie des Lumieres,"
(II) "les transformations de la morphologie de rimage," and
(III) discourse "supplante par la mise en scene, dans le
mythe, des figures de la production" (17-19).
Phillips, Michael. William Blake: The Creation of the Songs.
(2001) <B/afa? (2002)>
For another correction, see his "Color-Printing Songs of
Experience and Blake's Method of Registration: A Correction," Blake 36 (2002): 44-45 (the "error in my book" is the
statement that there are "pinholes" in the Experience prints
in the National Gallery of Canada; there is no pinhole there,
but, according to Phillips, this does not invalidate his theory
of two-stage printing of color prints).
For other discussions of his two-stage color-printing hypothesis, see (1) * Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi,"An
Inquiry into William Blake's Method of Color Printing,"
Blake 35 (2002): 74-103; (2) Martin Butlin, "'Is This a Private War or Can Anyone loin In?': A Plea for a Broader
Look at Blake's Color-Printing Techniques," Blake 36 (2002):
45-49; and (3) *Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi,
"Blake's Method of Color Printing: Some Responses and
Further Observations," Blake 36 (2002): 49-64.
Reviews
3. John Windle, online <www.worldbookdealers.com/articles/br/br0000000283.asp> 6 Feb. 2001 (doubts the theory
of double-printing the color prints on the basis of "a pinhole").
4. Suzanne Araas Vesely, Library 7S, 3 (2002): 219-21. ("A
major contribution," especially for its "convincing, compact defence of... [the] view that many of Blake's colourprinted works were printed twice" based on "pinholes and
other tell-tale features")
5. Alexander S. Gourlay, Blake 36 (2002): 66-71. ("A significant, albeit significantly flawed" book, in which some
of the evidence is "grievously misinterpreted," "marred
throughout by major and minor errors in interpreting the
complex evidence," so that "important aspects of its most
prominent arguments are simply wrong" [70, 68, 66, 70].
In an "Appendix: Phillips' Annotated Edition of Paradise
Lost [«£ Richard Bentlcy (1732)]!' 70-71, he denies convincingly on the basis of the unblakean handwriting and
sentiments "that the poet William Blake had anything to
do with this book" [71].)
Pierce, John B. Flexible Design: Revisionary Poetics in Blake's
Vala or The Four Zoas. (1998)
Review
5. Nicholas M. Williams, ELN 37.3 (March 2000): 82-84.
§*Punter, David. "William Blake." 79-90 of Literature in
Context. Ed. Rick Rylance and Judy Simons. (Houndmills
and New York: Palgrave, 2001)
*Raine, Kathleen. William Blake. (London, New York, Toronto,
1951) Bibliographical Series of Supplements to "British Book
News." B. (1958) C. * Revised (1965) D. "Revised (1969) E.
*Tr. Ichiro Koizumi. (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1956) Eibungaku
Handbook—Sakka to Sakuhin Series [Handbooks of English
Literature—"Writers and their Works" Series] 41 pp. In Japanese. <BB #2491> F. (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1982) In Japanese.
<Blake Studies in Japan (1995) 96; Blake (1995)> G. ^London: Thames and Hudson, 1999)
A brief introductory pamphlet, not remarkable for accuracy.
*Reilly, Susan P. "Blake's Poetics of Sound in The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell? Romanticism On the Net 16 (November 1999), corresponding to 8 printed pp. <http://users.
ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/blakepoetics.html> <Blake (2002)§>
"Blake's epithalamic prophecy is a monologic bricolage
which contains poetic subgenera integral to his privileging
of oral media . . . and . . . Blake's emphasis on oral and musical forms has a source in the work of... Alexander Geddes
Richey, William. Blake's Altering Aesthetic. (1997) <Blake
(1997§,1998)>
Review
6. Nelson Hilton, European Romantic Review 10 (1999): 38086.
§Rix, Robert W. "Blake's 'A Song of Liberty.'" Explicator 60
(2002): 131-34.
[Robinson, Henry Crabb.] "William Blake, Kunstler,
Dichter und religioser Schwarmer." [Tr. Dr. Nikolaus
Heinrich Julius.] Vaterliindisches Museum II, No. 1 (Hamburg: bei Friedrich Perthes, Jan. 1811) 107-31. [N.b. 11415 are misnumbered 113-14.] (British Library 8c Dr. Williams's Library) <BB #2538> B. (Nedeln [Liechtenstein]:
Kraus Reprints, 1971)
A. The table of contents says the essay is "(Aus der
Englischen)."
B. The 1971 printing is a facsimile of both volumes of
\ atcrlandischcs Museum, with no indication of the copy reproduced.
Summer 2003
Robinson, Jeffrey C. "Blake's Joseph and Mary." Chapter
10 (39,188) of his The Current of Romantic Passion. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991)
About the "amazing love scene" in Jerusalem pi. 61.
Rosenblum, Robert. "Cosmogonies and mysticism: Blake,
Runge, Palmer." Chapter II (41-64) in Part I: Northern Romanticism and the Resurrection of God in his Modern
Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to
Rothko. With 314 illustrations. (London, 1975) B. §(New
York, 1975) C. §Die moderne Malerei und die Tradition der
Romantik: Von CD. Friedrich zu Mark Rothko. Tr. Reinhard
Kaisar. (Munich, 1981) In German. <BBSp. 626> D. "Cosmogonias y misticismo: Blake, Runge, Palmer." La pintura
moderna y la tradicion del romanticismo nordico. (Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, 1993) Alianza Forma 120. In Spanish.
§Roussetzki, Remy. "The Aesthetics of Shock in Wordsworth." Schuylkill: A Creative and Critical Review from
Temple University 3 (2000): 77-90.
§Rozenberg, Simone. "L'Energie et la limite dans l'oeuvre
de William Blake." 89-103 of Litterature
Britannique:
Marches, bordures, limites, confins. (Paris: Institut d'Anglais
Charles V Universite Paris VII, 1983) Cahiers Charles V
No. 4. In French.
*Sagar, Keith. "William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience." On the web in 2002 <www.keithsagar.co.uk/
blake>.
§St. Pierre, Ronald. "'He Became a Little Child': Christ in
Blake's Songs of Innocence." Shoin Literary Review 31 (1993):
1-14.
Salyer, Gregory. "Poetry Written with Blood: Creating
Death in Dead Man" 17-36 ofImag(in)ing Otherness: Filmic
Visions of Living Together. Ed. S. Brent Plate and David Jasper. (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1999) American
Academy of Religion Cultural Criticism Series, No. 7.
The essay is about the film called Dead Man (Miramax
Films, 1995), written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, the central character in which is an accountant from Cleveland
named William Blake in the Wild West of the nineteenth
century, his fatal encounter with Thel, and a truculent Indian named Nobody who quotes the poetry of the accountant's namesake previously unknown to him.
§Santos, Alcides Cardoso dos. "Milton: A Poem in 2 Books:
Influencia e Afluencia na Linguagem Poetico-Visual de William Blake."Itincrdrios: Revista de Literatura 14 (1999): 13542. In Portuguese.
Summer 2003
§Sanzo, Eileen. "Blake's Ancient Britons: Blake and Primitive Humankind." Nassau Review. The Journal of Nassau
Community College 6 (1991): 91-99.
Sato, Hikari. "A New Blake for a New Century." Albion:
Kyodai Eibun Gakkai [Albion: The English Literature Society of Kyoto University] 48 (2002): 122-27. In Japanese,
despite the title in English.
*Sato, Hikari. "The Devil's Progress: Blake, Bunyan, and
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell!' Eibungaku Kenkyu, Nihon
Eibungakkai: Studies in English Literature 78 ([The English
Literary Society of Japan] 2002): 121-46.
"The Pilgrim's Progress is one of the satirical targets in
The Marriage"; "The man called 'Christian' in The Pilgrim's
Progress is, therefore, not a Christian in Blake's sense but
'the sneaking serpent' which drives 'The just man into barren climes' and walks'In mild humility'" (123,133-34); the
essay is derived from his Kyoto Ph.D. dissertation.
§Sato, Hikari. "'The Voice of honest indignation is the voice
of God': Freedom from Oppression in William Blake."
Kyoto University Ph.D., 2001. 181 pp.
For an essay derived from it, see his "The Devil's Progress:
Blake, Bunyan, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" above.
Schmidt, Michael. "Killing Doctor Johnson." 331 -40 of his
Lives of the Poets. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998)
B. ^"Killing Doctor Johnson: William Blake." 346-55 of Lives
of the Poets. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) C. §(New
York: Vintage Books, 2000)
A summary of Blake's life, with glances at critics: "Blake
is not often judiciously read" (331). Not related to Samuel
Johnson. 1999 and 2000 differ slightly from 1998.
*Scott, David. " T a r t verbal des poetes-peintres: the text/
image problem in the context of Blake's 'Infant Sorrow' as
analysed by Roman Jacobson in L'art verbal des poetespeintres: Blake, Rousseau et Klee." Words & Image 17 (2001):
208-18.
Why didn't Jacobson compare Blake's text with his design (208)?
*Shioe, Kozo. "Dohangashi William Blake [William Blake
Engraver]." Osaka University [Japan] Ph.D., 14 January
1998, with 97 plates. In Japanese.
Smith, John Thomas. "William Blake." Vol. II, 454-88, of
his Nollekens and His Times . . . (1828) <BB #2723>
His extra-illustrated copy of his book, described in his
letter of ?November 1828 (BR [2] 492), has not been traced.
Speirs, John. "Blake, Coleridge, Keats and Shakespeare."
11-48 (esp. 12-20) of his Poetry Towards Novel. (New York:
New York University Press, 1971)
Stevenson, Mary. "Martin Heidegger and William Blake:
Toward an ontological aesthetics." DAI 62 (2001): 1007A.
Texas (Arlington) Ph.D., 2001.
"Practices central to Blake's poetry such as 'eternal' and
'Albion' are compared to Heidegger's concepts of Dasein."
Studies in Romanticism
Volume 41, No. 2 (Summer [December] 2002):
The Once and Future Blake
1. Kari Kraus. "'Once Only Imagined': An Interview with
Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi." 143199. (The inter-read, via email [also given on the Romantic
Circles website <www.rc.umd.edu>], is a sequel to that in
Studies in Romanticism (1982) about the future of Blake
studies <BBS pp. 649-50>.)
2. Morton D. Paley. T P & his two Sons Satan & Adam."
201-35. ("We must bring to it [Blake's so-called 'Laocobn']
an understanding of the cultural history both of antiquity
and of his own time" (235), especially its theft by Napoleon in 1798 and its return to the Vatican in 1816.)
3. Steve Vine. "Blake's Material Sublime." 237-57. ("Blake's
sublime enacts an aesthetics of incompletion" [256].)
4. R. Paul Yoder. "What Happens When: Narrative and the
Changing Sequence of Plates in Blake's Jerusalem, Chapter
2." 259-78. (Asks for "synchronic readings" of the two versions of Chapter 2 [278].)
5. Paul Miner. "Blake's London: Times & Spaces." 279-316.
(Not very focused facts about the London of Blake's time.)
6. *David Wagenknecht. "Mimicry against Mimesis in 'Infant Sorrow': Seeing Through Blake's Image with Adorno
and Lacan." 317-348. (Densely theoretical.)
Review
7. Morton D. Paley. Review of Robin Hamlyn and Michael
Phillips, ed., William Blake (2000) [the Tate exhibition].
349-51. (Among many virtues, the organization of the exhibition is "quirky" and "arbitrary.")
Sturrock, June. "Urizen as Ceres in Blake's The Four Zoas,
Night the Ninth." £LN38.1 (Sept. 2000): 50-58.
There are a great many classical sources.
Summerfield, Henry. A Guide to the Books of William Blake.
(1998) <Blake(\999)>
Reviews
3. R. Paul Yoder, Blake 35 (2002): 130-32 (the book is "generally sound and informative").
4. G. E. Bentley, Jr., English Studies in Canada 28 (2002):
124-27 (this digest of several hundred critical works on
Blake published in English in 1910-1984 is "an immense
labour responsibly carried out").
*Suzuki, Masashi. "Eliot's Blake, Blake's Eliot: Two Readings of Dante." Kyoto Daigaku Sogo Ningen Gakubu Kiyo:
Bulletin of the Faculty of Integrated Human Studies, Kyoto
University 7 (2000): 111-21.
*Suzuki, Masashi. "Genso no Shigaku—William Blake
Kenkyu [Visionary Poetics: A Study of William Blake]."
Kyoto University [Japan] Ph.D., 25 November 1996, with
40 plates. In Japanese.
The doctorate was awarded for his collection of essays
(1994) <Blake (1995)> with the same title.
*Suzuki, Masashi. "Roman Syugi Jidai no Milton Zo—
Milton no 'Saiho to Shitsuraku-cn no Syusei' [The Image
of Milton in the Age of Romanticism: Milton's 'Re-visit'
and Blake's Re-writing of Paradise Lost}." Eibungaku
Hyoron: Review of English Literature, English Department,
Faculty of Integrated Human Studies, Kyoto University 74
(2002): 1-27. In Japanese.
§Tanaka, Takao. "William Blake no Shogai [The Life of William Blake]." Shikoku Daigaku Kiyo: Bulletin of Shikoku
University no. 15 (2001): 85-92. In Japanese.
§Tanaka, Takao. "William Blake no Muku no Uta [Songs of
Innocence of William Blake]." Shikoku Daigaku Kiyo: Bulletin of Shikoku University no. 17 (2002): 135-49. In Japanese.
§Tannenbaum, Leslie. "'What Are Those Golden Builders
Doing?' Mendelssohn, Blake and the (Un)Building of
Jerusalem." In British Romanticism and the Jews: History,
Culture, Literature. Ed. Sheila A. Spector. (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2002)
§Tordi, Rosita. Chapter on Blake in Ungaretti ei suoi
"Maitres a Penser." (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997) In Italian.
§Toyoda, Emiko. "Blake and Macpherson's Ossian." Kacho
Tanki Daigaku Kiyo [Bulletin of Kacho Junior College] no.
46 (2001): 63-88.
Trigilio, Tony. "The 'Moment Satan Cannot Find': Blake's
Transferential Language of Vision in Milton." Chapter 2
(45-81, 186-88) of his "Strange Prophecies Anew": Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, //. />., and Ginsberg. (Madison and
Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2000) Also passim, especially
13-20, 125-29. <Blake (2002§)>
"Meaning is the litoral boundary, or Red Sea shore, in
Milton0 (SI).
*Vaughan, William. "Blake the rebel" (131-33) and "Prophecy" (134-39) in his British Painting: The Golden Age from
Summer 2003
Hogarth to Turner. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998)
World of Art. <Blake (2002)§>
A standard summary; Blake was "a great enough visual
artist to know that he must strike by effect, by design and
colour" (136).
*Viscomi, Joseph. "Digital Facsimiles: Reading the William Blake Archive." Computers and the Humanities 36
(2002): 27-48, with reproductions of 24 objects.
"The Archive's exceptionally high standards of site construction, digital reproduction, and electronic editing have
made possible reproductions that are more accurate in
color, detail, and scale than the finest commercially published reproductions and facsimiles, and texts that are more
faithful to Blake's own than any collected edition has provided" (47).
§Wendorf, Richard. "After Sir Joshua." 260-79 of Representations of the Selffrom the Renaissance to Romanticism.
Ed. Patrick Coleman, Jayne Lewis, and Jill Kowalik. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Whittaker, Jason. William Blake and the Myths of Britain.
(1999) <Blake (2000)>
Review
4. Fiona Stafford, Romanticism 8.1 (2002): 88-90 ("a welcome contribution to an already rich field" [90]).
Williams, Nicholas M. Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of
William Blake. (1998) <Blake (1999)>
Review
3. William Richey, Romanticism 7.1 (2001): 93-96 (a series
of "objections to Williams's book" [95]).
Wright, Julia. "'Greek & Latin Slaves of the Sword': Rejecting the Imperial Nation in Blake's Milton." Chapter 12
(255-72, 350-61) of Milton and the Imperial Vision. Ed.
Balachandra Rajan and Elizabeth Sauer. (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1999) Medieval and Renaissance Literary Studies.
She wishes to "explore Blake's use of Milton . . . as an
emblem for cultural complicity in and corruption by the
imperial project for which the classical nations provide the
type" (258).
Yamauchi, Koichiro. "Toward the Dualistic Synthesis in
William Blake's Mystical Poems." Jinbun Ronsyu [Studies
in Humanities, Shizuoka University] no. 52 (2001): 223-38.
Division II: Blake's Circle
Butts, Thomas Jr. (1788-1862)
Blake's Student, Son of his Patron
Two copies of a previously unrecorded engraving inscribed
"Man on a Drinking Horse," "T Butts: sc,""22 Jan y. 1806,"
are reported in R. N. Essick,"Blake in the Marketplace, 2002,"
Blake 36 (2003), one acquired by Alexander Gourlay. Pencil
inscriptions on the versos indicate that they were printed in
a run of 250 copies by the Miniature Print Society of Kansas
City, Missouri, from the copperplate donated by Col. W. R.
Moss (doubtless the Blake collector Lt. Col. W E. Moss) to
the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Kansas City.
This is probably the first effort of Tommy Butts as Blake's
pupil; Blake's first receipt, for £25.5.0, for tutoring him is
dated 25 December 1805 (BR [2] 768).
Gardner, Paul. "Man on a Drinking Horse." A 1 -page leaflet of c. 1942 describing the engraving signed "T Butts: sc |
22Jan>. 1806?
Calvert, Edward (1799-1883)
Artist and Disciple
See Mark Evans, above.
Fuseli, John Henry (1741-1825)
Swiss Painter, Intimate Friend of Blake
§Herrmann, Sabine. Die naturliche Ursprache in der Kunst
um 1800: Praxis und Theorie der Physiognomik bei Fussli und
Lavater. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999) 116 pp.
For Lavater, see also (1) §Johann Caspar Lavater: Das
Antlitz, eine Obsession: Kunsthaus Zurich, [An exhibition] 9.
Februar bis 22. April 2001. (Zurich: Kunsthaus Zurich, 2001);
(2) Signatur der Seek: Physiognomische Studien-blatter aus
der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek Wien [An exhibition in Stadtmuseum Jena, 23 June-25 Aug. 2001; Gemaldegalerie, Dessau, 8 Sept.-29 Oct. 2001]. (Jena: Galerie im
Stadtmuseum, 2001) 77 pp.; and especially (3) §Gerda Mraz
and Uwe Schogl, Das Kunstkabinett des Johann Caspar
Lavater. (Wien: Bohlau, 1999) 28 cm., 408 pp. (about the
20,102 designs, prints, and paintings in 91 portfolios in the
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek).
Johnson, Joseph (1738-1809)
Bookseller, Employer of Blake
Gaull, Marilyn. "Joseph Johnson: Literary Alchemist." European Romantic Review 10 (1999): 265-78.
About Johnson's publishing eclecticism, though in terms
of facts "I have nothing new to offer" (265).
Wordsworth Circle
Volume 33, No. 3 (Summer [Dec] 2002)
Joseph Johnson: Essays Mostly Delivered at the WordsworthColeridge Association, New Orleans, La, December 2001.
Summer 2003
The essays include:
1. Marilyn Gaull. "Joseph Johnson's World: Ancestral Voices,
Invisible Worms, and Roaming Tigers." 92-94. (About "the
seminal and terminal role Johnson served in the creative
process" [93].)
2. Leslie F. Chard, II. "Joseph Johnson in the 1790s." 95100. (A dense and valuable essay, with a table of Johnson
publications 1790-1800 taken from his "unpublished booklength study of Johnson's entire publishing career.")
3. Angela Esterhammer. "Continental Literature, Translation, and the Johnson Circle." 101-03. (Especially about the
French Revolution, education for children, serious fiction,
and philosophy [101].)
4. Beth Lau. "William Godwin and the Joseph Johnson
Circle: The Evidence of the Diaries." 104-08. (Fuseli is listed
at Johnson's dinners on 122 occasions [105].)
5. Laura Mandell. "Johnson's Lessons for Men: Producing
the Professional Woman Writer." 108-12. (About books for
teaching children; very little is about Joseph Johnson.)
6. Debbie Lee. "Johnson, Stedman, Blake and the Monkeys." 116-19. (Excerpted from her Slavery and the Romantic
Imagination [2002].)
7. Alan Richardson. "Erasmus Darwin and the Fungus
School." 113-16. (About Darwin's "organic" language.)
Linnell, John (1792-1882)
Painter, Engraver, Patron of Blake
17 July-4 November 2001
§[ Exhibition of works from the Ivimy MSS and of Linnell's
art from members of the Linnell family at the Fit/william
Museum, 17 July-4 November 2001.]
The works exhibited were described in an online catalogue
<http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/msspb/exhibit/
Linnell/index.htmX
Palmer, Samuel (1805-1881)
Artist and Disciple
See Mark Evans, above.
Index
Bentley, Dr. E. B. 5
Bentley, G. E., Jr. 14,17,18,28
Blair, Grave 6,12,16,19
Bryant, Jacob 12
Butlin, Martin 16, 17, 18
Butts, Thomas, Sr. 8
Butts, Thomas, Jr. 29
Calvert, Edward 20
Cazamian, M. L. 18
Chard, Leslie E, II 30
Connolly, Tristanne 6
Curran, Stuart 11
Dante designs 14,15,24
Davies, J. M. Q. 21
Davies, Keri 16, 18
Dent, Shirley 6
Dhar, Subir 6
DiSalvo, Jacqueline 22
Doce, Jordi 9
Doody, Margaret Anne 25
Essick, Robert N. 7,16,17,20
Esterhammer, Angela 30
Europe 15,16,17,21,25
Evans, Mark 7
Exhibitions 13-14
Ferber, Michael 8,16, 21
For the Sexes 8
Four Zoas 18,19,21,23,26,28
Freeman, Kathryn S. 21
French Revolution 15
Frost, Everett C. 8,21
Fuseli, John 29
Gardner, Paul 29
Gaull, Marilyn 29,30
Gleckner, Robert F. 10
Gourlay, Alexander S. 17, 21, 26
Grant, John E. 21
Grenfell, Michael 17, 18
Editors' note: The index below includes authors of reviews, listed
m the text under work reviewed and authors from collections of
essays and periodicals. Authors in Part VI: Criticism, Biography, Hayley, William 12
Heppner, Christopher 17
and Scholarly Studies are listed alphabetically on pages 14-29
1 terrmann, Sabine 29
and as such are not included in the index.
High tower, Scott L6
Hilton, Nelson 17,26
America 15, 25
1 lutchings, Kevin 6
Andres, Ramon 9, 11
Ansari.A. A. 6
An/ai, Kciko 22
Island in the Moon 21
Barry, Amanda 22
Behrendt, Stephen C. 21
Jerusalem 20,21,25,26,28
Johnson, Dennis Loy 16
Summer 2003
Johnson, Joseph 29-30
Kraus, Kari 28
Kruger, Kathryn Sullivan 8
Thel 19,22,24
Trianon Press 22
"The Tyger" 4, 11
Urizen 8, 15,16,21,22,24
Landers, Linda 8, 18
Laocobn 25,28
Lau, Beth 30
Lavater, John Caspar 12-13, 29
Lee, Debbie 30
Lindberg, Bo Ossian 14, 16
Linnell, John 30
Lussier, Mark S. 16
Lyrical Ballads 18,24
Mandell, Laura 30
Marriage 8-9, 10, 15, 20, 21, 26, 27
Marsh, Nicholas 6
McClenahan, Catherine L. 21
Mee,Jon 8,21
"The Mental Traveller" 11,15,18
Michael, Jennifer Davis 21
Milton 9, 15, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29
Milton, John 14,21,28
Minckler, David 17
Miner, Paul 28
Vernede, Andrew 18,24
Vesely, Suzanne Araas 26
Vial, Juan Manuel 16
Vine, Steve 28
Viscomi, Joseph 7,16, 17, 20
Visions 9,15, 20, 22
Wagenknecht, David 28
Weiler, Robert A. 16
Whittaker, Jason 6, 18
William Blake Archive 11, 20, 29
Williams, Nicholas M. 26
Windle.John 26
Yoder, R. Paul 16,28
Young, Night Thoughts 21, 25
Oe, Kenzaburo 7
Otto, Peter 21
Paley, Morton D. 8,14,19,21,28
Palmer, Samuel 20
Persyn, Mary-Kelly 21
Pharabod-Ibata, Helene 6
Phillips, Michael 7,14,17
Poetical Sketches 21
Printing methods 7, 16,17,26
Punter, David 24
Ram6n, Esther 9
Richardson, Alan 30
Richey, William 29
Rosso, G. A. 8,21
Rubinstein, Christopher 18
Ruperez, Angel 9,11
Sato, Hikari 8
Schiff,Gert 17
Solomon, Andrew 17,18
Songs 9, 15,16,17,20,24, 25,26, 27,28
Spector, Sheila A. 21
Squibbs, Richard J. 21
Stafford, Fiona 29
Stedman, Narrative 23, 30
Sunen, Juan Carlos 9
Summer 2003
MINUTE
PARTICULARS
Muir's Facsimiles and the Missing Visions
BY DAVID DUFF
A
mong the rich holdings in the Historic Collections at
the University of Aberdeen is an item that purports to
be an original copy of Blake's Visions of the Daughters of
Albion. Dated 1793 on the title page, this slim folio, bound
in maroon Morocco leather, contains all eleven illuminated
plates that normally comprise Visions, and at first glance
there is no indication that it is anything other than an authentic copy of Blake's book. My excitement on an initial
inspection of this volume increased when I noticed that
the date of acquisition—according to a label on the inside
cover, the book was donated to the Library in 1900 by the
"Misses Gordon," of a prominent Aberdeenshire family—
coincided approximately with the date at which one of the
eighteen known copies of Visions went missing. Could this
be the lost copy Q that was sold at auction at Sotheby's on
24 February 1897, and has since been untraced?1 Was Aberdeen University Library in the lucky position of the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, where Detlef Dorrbecker recently discovered an additional, nineteenth copy (R) of Visions, previously misattributed as a facsimile?2
Unfortunately, the situation here is the reverse. Comparison with copy A of Blake's original, in the British Museum,
quickly revealed that the Aberdeen copy is a facsimile, and
I was soon able to identify it as the lithographic facsimile
produced by William Muir in 1884-85, one of a series of
facsimiles of the illuminated books issued by Muir from
the "Blake Press" at Edmonton in London between 1884
and 1890.' Fifty copies of the Visions facsimile were produced, of which I have seen the British Museum and British Library copies. Apart from the inferior quality of the
For assistance with archival research, I am grateful to Iain Beavan,
Head, Special Libraries and Archives, Historic Collections, University
of Aberdeen; and to Sheila O' Connell, Assistant Keeper, Department
of Prints and Drawings, British Museum. I am also indebted to Robert
N. Essick for helpful comments on a draft of this article, and for additional information about Mini's facsimiles.
1. Copy designations here as given in Bentley, Blake Books 46478.
2. A description of copy R can be found in Bentley, Blake Booh
Supplement 143-46.
3. For a bibliographic description of Muir's facsimile series, "The
IidftXM of the Works of William Blake," see Keynes, Bibliography 29598. Bentley, "'Blake . . . Had No Quaritch'" gives further details about
the facsimiles and their sale. For general information about Muir
(1845-1938), a native Scot who is reported to have spent a period in
Aberdeen in the 1870s before moving to Manchester and then London, see Davies.
lettering, the many small discrepancies between Muir's designs and Blake's originals, and the sometimes crude coloring, one particular mistake in the text puts it beyond doubt
that the Aberdeen copy is Muir's handiwork. In copy A of
Blake's original, lines 16 and 17 of plate 4 read: "Bromion
rent her with his thunders, on his stormy bed / Lay the faint
maid, and soon her woes appalld his thunders hoarse."
Muir's facsimile, which was based on copy A, garbles this
climactic moment by omitting the period after "thunders"
and transcribing "hoarse" as "house" (illus. 1). The same
error appears in the British Museum and British Library
copies of the facsimile, as it must in all others since the
lettering is part of the printed design.
Other copies of Muir's Visions that I have seen are identical to the Aberdeen copy as far as the printed designs are
concerned, but the ink overlay, additional graphic work and
coloring differ considerably, such variation being a consequence of Muir's production method—hand coloring. The
Aberdeen copy and the British Library facsimile are both
produced on paper bearing (on some plates only) the watermark "Hodgkinson and Co.," a Somerset firm for which
trading records begin in the 1850s (seven of the fifty copies
of Muir's facsimile were produced on "antique note-paper,"4
but these are not among them). The British Library copy is
dated 1885; the similarity of paper type suggests that the
Aberdeen copy is the same issue.
What the Aberdeen copy lacks is Muir's signature and
the copy number, both of which would normally appear
on the outside wrapper and identify it as a facsimile. The
wrapper itself is also different, being made of brown card
instead of the blue-grey paper normally used by Muir. The
wording on it differs too: Muir normally prints the title in
golden-brown or golden-yellow ink on the recto of the front
cover, and includes Blake's name. The title on the recto of
the front cover of the Aberdeen wrapper is written by hand
in black ink, and reads simply "Visions of | the Daughters
of | Albion." The cursive lettering exactly reproduces that
of Blake's own title page, and pencil lines are still visible
that have been used to help align the letters correctly. A
label identifies the binder as "Middleton of Adelphi," a firm
that traded from this Aberdeen address from 1889 till at
least 1914. Library records indicate that the volume was
almost certainly bound before it was acquired by Aberdeen
University in 1900.
These differences raise a number of possibilities. Were
the wrapper otherwise identical to the other Muir facsimiles, the omission of the signature and number on the Aberdeen copy could have been accidental (Muir was inconsistent about signing and numbering copies). Since the wrapper is not the same, however, another explanation must be
sought. The simplest one is that Muir's original wrapper
was innocently removed and replaced as or before the work
4. Keynes, Bibliography 296.
Summer 2003
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1. Detail from plate 4 of Muir's facsimile of Visions, showing inferior quality of lettering and mistranscription of "thunders hoarse;
Reproduced by permission of the University of Aberdeen.
was bound; I will come back to this. Another possibility is
that at some stage the work has been deliberately passed
off as a Blake original, by removing the external markers
that would identify it as a facsimile. If so, this would not be
the first time that one of Muir's facsimiles has been mistaken for an original. Bentley (Blake Books 28-29) notes that
Muir's works were on occasion accidentally sold as originals, and Viscomi's detailed investigation (ch. 21) of the
Blake book trade of the late nineteenth century shows that
there were also cases of fraudulence and forgery in which
Muir's facsimiles were implicated.
In the present case, however, one further fact complicates
the whole issue: the Aberdeen copy carries an extra plate
(illus. 2). Bound into the volume between plate 11 and the
back wrapper is a twelfth plate depicting a detail from
Blake's famous image "The Ancient of Days," which normally forms the frontispiece of Europe and was also sold by
Blake as a separate plate.5 The Aberdeen plate includes only
the central part of the image (which measures approximately 10x7 cm.), comprising the face with the long white
hair and beard flowing to one side, and the upper left arm
reaching down. The rest of the figure, the compasses, the
sun and other parts of the background are all omitted. The
picture is hand-painted in watercolor, with the outlines
5. Bentley, Blake Books 108-10; Blake Books Supplement 58.
Summer 2003
2. Extra plate in Aberdeen copy, showing Muir's rendition of a
detail from "The Ancient of Days." Reproduced by permission
of the University of Aberdeen.
drawn by brush or pen. There is no printed design underneath.
Who created this extra plate and why it is here are matters for conjecture. The colors used are similar to those of
other plates in Muir's Visions, as is the somewhat unblakean
way in which details of the face have been picked out in
dark grey. No watermark is visible, but the paper is of the
same type used for the other plates. The appropriate corn-
parison, though, is not with Visions, to which this plate does
not belong, but with Muir's facsimile of the frontispiece to
Europe, of which this image is a detail. In fact, several comparisons are possible. In addition to his facsimile of Europe
published in 1887, Muir, like Blake, also issued "The Ancient of Days" as a separate plate. Essick (258-60) has established that there are two basic variants of this plate: a
finely colored type, executed to a much higher standard
than is found in Muir's other facsimiles (so skillful and convincing that Essick argues that two copies of this plate previously attributed to Blake are in fact Muir facsimiles of
this type); and a very awkwardly colored type, predominantly in red, yellow, pink, black and blue. There is, in addition, a watercolor drawing of "The Ancient of Days" in
the British Museum'1 which has similarly crude coloring:
Erdman (156) describes it as "an obvious forgery," but Essick
(259) identifies it as "probably also produced by Muir or
one of his assistants and used as a guide for coloring the
lithographs."
Besides being only a detail, the Aberdeen drawing does
not closely resemble any of the other Muir versions of this
image. The quality of execution, especially in the delineation of the face and beard, is much finer than that of the
British Museum drawing. The coloring is also markedly
different, both from this drawing and from the other Muirs
I have seen (namely, the copies of Muir's Europe in the British Museum and British Library, and the Keynes impression of "The Ancient of Days" now attributed to Muir 7 ).
Generally, the coloring of the Aberdeen drawing is much
lighter. The beard is colored white and different shades of
grey, with only a hint of yellow. The background is a simple
grey wash, instead of the fiery red or pink of Muir's Europe.
There is no attempt to depict the shape or color of the setting sun.
credibility as an authentic Blake. "The Ancient of Days" was,
after all, one of Blake's most familiar images, of which there
is only one known sketch;8 and the plate palpably does not
belong here. It is therefore much more likely that the insertion of the extra plate and the substitution of Muir's original wrapper (if there was one) were done innocently, either as or before the book was bound.
There is, though, another possible explanation, from
which a more important conclusion could be drawn. The
only record we have of missing copy Q of Visions is the
single auction at Sotheby's on 24 February 1897, at which
it is described as eleven plates "uncut and sewn" (Bentley,
Blake Books 477). Since Muir's facsimiles were also sold
uncut and sewn, the possibility arises that the Sotheby's
copy was actually a misattributed Muir rather than an authentic Blake, and that the Aberdeen volume is this same
copy with the insertion of "The Ancient of Days" drawing
(obtained from another source) and the addition of the card
wrapper. This is pure speculation, of course, but it is consistent with what little definite evidence we have, including
the fact that the Aberdeen copy was bound sometime between 1889 and 1900. Even if the Aberdeen facsimile is not
the Sotheby's copy, the possibility remains that the supposed
copy Q of Visions was in fact some other Muir stripped of
its identifying features. We should, in other words, put a
tentative question mark over the authenticity of missing
copy Q.
These differences, marked though they are, do not mean
that the Aberdeen drawing could not have been executed
by Muir. There is still a strong possibility that this is another Muir drawing: one perhaps intended (if its function
was similar to that conjectured for the British Museum
drawing) as a guide to how details of the face and beard
should be added to the lithograph, or simply a preparatory
sketch. Whatever its origin, this does not explain how it
came to be bound with Visions, or why the Aberdeen volume as a whole fails to identify itself as a facsimile. About
these matters, we can only speculate. Fraudulent intent, at
the point at which the wrapper was added and/or the work
was bound, seems highly unlikely, since, even in the absence of marks identifying it as a facsimile, the insertion of
the extra plate would have dramatically reduced the book's
Bentley, G.E., Jr. Blake Books. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Bentley. "'Blake . . . Had No Quaritch': The Sale of William
Muir's Blake Facsimiles." Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 27.1
(1993): 4-13.
Bentley. Blake Books Supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995.
Blake, William. The Notebook of William Blake: A Photographic
and Typographic Facsimile. Ed. David V. Erdman with the
assistance of Donald K. Moore. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1973.
Davies, Keri. "William Muir and the Blake Press at Edmonton." Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 27. \ (1993): 14-25.
Erdman, David V., ed. The Illuminated Blake. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Essick, Robert N. The Separate Plates of William Blake: A (\ualogue. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Keynes, Geoffrey. A Bibliography of William Blake. New York:
GrolierClub, 1921.
Keynes. Engravings by William Blake: The Separate Plates. A
Catalogue Raisonne'e. Dublin: Emery Walker, 1956.
Viscomi, Joseph. Blake and the Idea of the Book. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993.
6. British Museum catalogue no.: 1885-5-9-1619 British Roj 1'IV.
7.1 have consulted the reproduction m Keynes, Engraving* pi. 16.
The Keynes copy of "The Ancient of Days" is one that Essick (25860) identifies as a Muir facsimile rather than a Blake.
8. The sketch entitled "Who shall bind the infinite" in Blake's Notebook 96.
Works Cited
Summer 2003
1. "Man on a Drinking Horse," by Thomas Butts. Platemark 5.1 x 8.7 cm.
"Man on a Drinking Horse"
A Print by Thomas Butts, Jr.
BY ALEXANDER S. GOURLAY
A
posthumous restrike from a plate evidently etched by
Blake's pupil Thomas Butts, Jr. (or perhaps Sr.), in 1806
was offered on eBay in September, 2002, and I bought it for
$4.99; this quickly led to another impression, now Essick
collection, and then two more, as well as the location of the
copper plate from which they were all taken.1 All four impressions were made ca. 1942 by a Midwest-based print subscription collective (roughly on the model of the Book-ofthe-Month Club) called the Miniature Print Society. The
mat on which my impression of the print is mounted indicates that 250 were printed for the society's subscribers, and
an information sheet by Paul Gardner that accompanied it
reports that the copper plate came from "the collection of
Colonel W. R. Moss," presumably an error for Lt. Col. W. E.
Moss, the English collector. In 1937 Moss sold at auction
seven copper plates executed by Butts; these had been found
in an apothecary's cabinet that Moss bought from the Butts
family, to whom it was given by Blake as a gift (Bentley 176).
The Moss sale of 1937 included "Six original copper plates
by Thomas Butts under Blake's tuition, framed and glazed,"
1. Thanks to Robert N. Essick and G. E. Bentley, Jr., for additional
research and helpful suggestions.
Summer 2003
as well as another Butts plate with a fragment of a Blake
relief etching on the other side.2 Essick and I both think it
likely that the plate for "Man on a Drinking Horse" was
among these six, though it could conceivably have been sold
separately on another occasion. On 14 March 1942, the
Miniature Print Society gave the copper plate to the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; it is still
there, but in temporary storage, so it was not examined for
this note. 3
The senior Thomas Butts (1757-1845), a government
clerk of modest means, was Blake's most consistent and loyal
patron. In 1805, perhaps as a Christmas present, the elder
Butts hired Blake to give etching/engraving lessons to his
son, Thomas Butts, Jr. (1788-1862), then seventeen. Known
prints attributed to Thomas Butts include images of a
seated, wreathed classical figure with a lyre; a head of a
bearded saint; a bust of a winged angel; a satyr and dancing
figures; two copies after Blake designs ("Lear and Cordelia,"
"Christ Trampling Satan"); and two undistinguished com2. Moss 41; Essick reports in correspondence that according to an
annotated copy of the sale catalogue the six plates in Lot 278 were sold
"to 'Last,'—no doubt a dealer," who probably sold this plate to the Miniature Print Society. Lot 171 was a rejected plate from Blake's America,
now in the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, that has a
work by Butts on the reverse, making a total of at least seven Butts
copper plates from the Moss collection in this sale.
3. George McKenna, Consultant, Department of Prints and Photographs, Nelson-Atkins Museum, provided information about the plate
and its acquisition.
mercial-looking plates that depict "afflicted" children, also
putatively after Blake. Reproductions of the first two can
be found in Briggs; all are discussed and the latter four are
reproduced in Essick 4 (211-26).
The new Butts print, called "Man on a Drinking Horse"
by the Miniature Print Society, shows a mounted traveler
wearing a wide-brimmed hat and leaning slightly forward
(illus. 1). His horse is standing in shallow water, probably
a river or stream, with its head lowered to drink. In the
foreground are reeds, logs, stumps and other vegetation,
and in the sky are some horizontal lines suggesting open
sky and clouds. There is a bedroll behind the man's lightly
indicated saddle, and he is holding a long narrow object in
his left hand (a crop? a staff?) that is pointed down in the
general direction of the horse's head.
Both my impression and Essick's are printed on laid paper with quite a bit of "plate tone," imparting a grayish tinge
to the whole printed area. Although the print is signed in
the plate "T Butts: sc" and dated "22 Jan y. 1806," it does not
appear to be finished—a mysterious block of parallel hatching lines floats next to a tall stump at center right, and in
general the clumsy execution is consistent with the date,
which is only a few weeks after a year of lessons probably
began sometime around Christmas Day 1805 (Essick 211).
As in the case of all the Butts prints, it is not certain whether
the Thomas Butts who signed the plate was the father or
son; the elder Butts was said to have benefited more from
the lessons than the son did (Essick 211). The signature on
"Man on a Drinking Horse" closely resembles those on two
other Butts works reproduced in Briggs, 94 and 96. There
are no stylistic or other indications that Butts was working
from a design by Blake, as he did in some of his other known
works. But the composition as a whole is more sophisticated than the execution of the print, which suggests that it
may have been copied from something, perhaps a vignette
in a book. This is the only subject among known Butts prints
that could be called a genre picture, and I doubt that it
would have been Blake's choice as an early assignment for a
pupil.
My impression of the plate is reproduced here; Essick's is
described in his annual report of Blake-related transactions
for 2002 (Blake 36 [2003]:127). As this article was being
completed, Sarah Jones, the managing editor of Blake, discovered that William C. Schneider, a collector in Troy, New
York, had written to the journal in 1996 about another
impression of this etching that he had purchased in
Schuylerville, New York; he recognized its relevance to Blake
studies, and still has the print, but lor some reason nothing
came of his inquiry. One more impression was offered on
eBay in March 2003, and was purchased by G. E. Bentley,
4. The pktUR of "Venus Aihulyomciu-"reproducedin Briggs (96)
maybe a drawing rather this I pt ml; sec Bttkk 212.
Jr. Somewhere out there are 246 more impressions of this
undistinguished print, as well as at least five more copper
plates capable of printing restrikes of other Buttsiana.
Works Cited
Bentley, G. E., Jr. Blake Records. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1969.
Briggs, Ada E. "Mr. Butts, the Friend and Patron of Blake."
The Connoisseur 19 (Sept./Oct. 1907): 92-96.
Essick, Robert N. The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983.
Gardner, Paul. "Man on a Drinking Horse." [Kansas City, MO?:
Miniature Print Society, ca. 1942.]
Moss, William E. Catalogue of the Very Wcll-Known and Valuable Library, the Property ofLt.-Col. W. E. Moss of the Manor
house, Sonning-on-Thames, Berks. [London: Sotheby, 1937.]
R
E
V
I
E
W
S
K. E. Smith. An Analysis of William Blake's Early
Writings and Designs to 1790, Including Songs
of Innocence. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press,
1999. Studies in British Literature, vol. 42. xxi
+ 273 pp., 11 b&w illus. $119.95/£74.95, hardcover.
Reviewed by NELSON
HILTON
A
s its title suggests, this expensive, workmanlike study
sets out to consider the oeuvre and trajectory of a William Blake who, say, fell into a "consumsion" and died in
November 1790, days before his thirty-third birthday. At
one time to have been called Blake: The Road to Innocence
(back cover, 61, 87, 154), the book might more aptly be
imagined as Innocent Blake. It brings together some of the
research on these early productions to support the incontrovertible claim that
[t]he early work has its own authority, demands our attention to its enterprise. One does not have to claim artistic equality of any kind with the later work to argue that
Poetical Sketches is one of the most adventurous and energetic poetry books of the 1780s. that An Island in the Moon
is one of few attempts in its time to take Sterne's narrative
innovations seriously or that Blake's history paintings of
the early 1780s map an unusually ambitious role for the
painting of English historical scenes. (4)
Summer 2003
Its assertion that "to attempt to substantiate and fill out
these claims of artistic significance . . . this study dwells in
detail on specific texts and designs" (4) seems more problematic. While the book serves passably as an introductory
discussion or "commentary" (186), it is neither comprehensive in scholarship nor convincing with regard to the
analytical pretensions of the title.
Consider for instance the following treatment of "Song
2nd by a Young Shepherd," an early version of "Laughing
Song" added (but not in Blake's hand) to one copy of Poetical Sketches. For Smith,
the innocent note is here in the unabashed and buoyant
refrain which confirms that already for Blake Mirth is better than Fun and Happiness than either:
Come live & be merry and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, Ha, He. ( E l l )
In the context of the early 1780s, then, we can see protoInnocence as a pulling away first from the elaborate
literarity [sic] of Poetical Sketches and then from the satirical cynicism of An Island in the Moon. Although it is the
second movement which will concern us in detail here,
the mention of the first highlights the extent to which the
momentum is away not only from satire but also from the
more general knowingness of tone and outlook in which
Blake's early satire is embedded. (87)
Despite stated awareness of the "mixing of sources . . . central to Blake's creative process" (22), the "very direct way in
which Blake would take what he wanted" (20), not to mention the blatant literariness of "come live . . . with me . . . &
b e . . . , " Smith has no place for the echo of the bawdy chorus
from Troilus and Cressida 3.1: "Yet that which seems to
wound to kill / Doth turn oh oh to ha ha he" and an endemic "knowingness of tone and outlook" which such an
allusion would posit in the holy place [ha, ha, he] of Songs
of Innocence. (For Smith, "the presence of a vitalistic, sexual
reference ['unabashed and buoyant' or not!] suggests a world
which, for good or ill, breaks free of Innocence" [170].) Such
commentary has little capacity for dealing with vision. Despite its identification of "three modes of innocent poem"
(102) or, in another mood, "four levels of innocent song"—
(a) a group of "London-humanitarian" songs, (b) songs of
infant joy with strongly Christian-pastoral-symbolic overtones, (c) songs which use Innocence as startling light into
pressing social problems of the age and (d) songs which
affirm in a broad, sweeping context the validity of Innocence as a world-view. This would then leave us with a
residual category of songs, namely those four which Blake
eventually transferred from Innocence to Experience. (161)
—it can in no sense imagine innocent song functioning at
once as a three-part glee much less in a four-fold manner.
Curious also is that "residual category of songs," when "it is
necessary to see Songs of Innocence as a composed whole, as
Summer 2003
the first achieved version of Blake's composite art" (121) with
its own "free-standing significance" (207). Smith can approve of "drawing attention . . . to the care needed by both
editors and their readers in attending to precisely what Blake
wrote" (157), then quote precisely even as he passes unremarked the text of the black boy he sees as "returning good
for evil": "'111 shade him from the heat till he can bear.'"
While Smith asserts that "the very notion of a road towards
Innocence is surely made more credible rather than less by
acknowledgment of conscious or unconscious artistic
choices taken by Blake along the way" (87), the possibility
of the artist's encoding of unconscious expression into the
"fully-dramatized context of the words" in Songs goes unacknowledged, though when it suits Smith's purpose of invoking orthodox allusions to the Psalms or the Anglican
prayer book he can note "the slight but marked shift of syntax which alerts us to the new dimension" (168).
A pervasive reliance on pathos undercuts logos and ethos
throughout with frequent invocations of "surely," "indeed,"
"of course," and, in particular, repeated, tiresome assertions
of what is "important" (a word never used by Blake). Saving the most important almost for last, Smith suggests in
his consideration of "The Chimney Sweeper" that
whatever our various interpretations may be, the most
important thing is to have the right starting-point for them
in the simulation of the chimney sweeper's voice—our intuition of authorial sub-texts and search for our own
framework of evaluation will follow soon enough. (175)
How, one wonders, does one voice "111 shade him"? And
how is "the simulation of the chimney sweeper's voice" not
always already an "intuition"? The footnote to this heartfelt insistence relates the author's debt to some personal correspondence "for bringing me strongly back to this fundamental—yet easily-evaded—starting point of understanding 'The Chimney Sweeper' of Innocence" (245). The fundamental starting point is, evidently, the right starting point,
not necessarily the same as "precisely what Blake wrote."
Thus the reader's relation to the problematic last line of "The
Chimney Sweeper"—"So if all do their duty, they need not
fear harm"—depends on "an ability to listen to exactly what
is being said by this child at this moment" (174). lust as,
one supposes, Smith's reader discerns "exactly what is being
said" in the sweeper's cry "weep weep weep weep" amid the
multiple semantics and inferences of its writing.
The fundamental problem, for this reviewer at least, is
Smith's unquestioned, uncritical conception of "voice" that
text serves only to transcribe. "Putting it at its simplest,"
we read a bit further on, "the songs need to be heard before
they can be analyzed, their energies responded to before
their framework is deconstructed" (177-78). (Or did you
hear that?) (And how does one "respond" to "energies" anyway?) The consideration of these things is the whole duty
of any reader, and so the subject of the "Introduction," that
opening road into Innocence ("Innocence sustains itself as
a voice," writes Smith [181]). Of that plate's compressed
narrative of individual/cultural progression from sound to
words to writing Smith hears only "consonance between
the world of the child on a cloud who sets the agenda of
wholesome joy and tears and the piper who provides their
artistic articulation" as he marks for us also the absence of
any "felt contradiction between the downward triumphant
narrative of the verse and the upward swing towards heaven
of the design's vegetation" (159). The reason "Every child
may joy to hear," one supposes, is that with the songs now
written down, etched, and printed, they may be read
aloud—perhaps even with real inspiration—by some
knowledgeable (i.e. experienced) reader. But in either event
There Is No Natural (or, unmediated) Access—the songs
can never be "heard" before they have been analyzed—not
by the reader, who must negotiate the signifiers ("111"? *I'll?),
nor by young listeners, with no voice about whatever reading experience they cannot choose but overhear. Several
innocent references to "deconstruction" (above, and 85,98,
151) add to the impression that, some useful if unexceptional contextualization notwithstanding, this effort does
not live up to its claim to offer "An Analysis."
BLAKE AND
HOMOSEXUALITY
CHRISTOPHER Z. HOBSON
Christopher Z. Hobson. Blake and Homosexuality. New York: Palgrave, 2000. xxii + 249 pp.
$59.95/£40.00, hardcover.
Reviewed by MARGARET STORCH
C
hristopher Z. Hobson has written a welcome study of
an important aspect of Blake that is too often ignored.
People have noted the ideal beauty of Blake's male figures,
his sometimes androgynous female figures, and the centrality of the theme of brotherhood in his work. Rarely has
it been suggested that Blake had a specific homosexual sympathy.
Hobson presents the view not that Blake himself was necessarily homosexual or bisexual but that he came to empathize with male homosexuals and lesbians as he became
increasingly aware of the prejudice and victimization they
suffered. The study is well grounded in the social history
of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when a
specific awareness of male homosexual identity together
with intolerance, greater legal repression, and mob antagonism came about. Even the republican tradition of reform
which Blake espoused was inimical to sodomy. Hobson suggests that Blake's views may have developed in a way similar to those of Jeremy Bentfaam, his close contemporary,
who over several decades moved to a position of acceptance of homosexuality as a variant of human nature.
38 Blake/An Illustrated Quarter l\
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Hobson considers that Blake's works before Vie Four Zoas
reflect "the poetics of masculinity," including the tendency
observed by feminists and others to treat desire and gratification in terms of heterosexual male dominance. The
Prcludium to America is a notably aggressive example. The
illustrations to the poems may depict possibly homosexual
figures, for instance the women in the opening plates of
Vision* of'theDaughters of Albion, but they are absorbed in
the overall heterosexual male-centered ethos. Hobson also
discusses Blake's views on masturbation as shown in this
period, which like his masculinist perspective are regressive. He suggests that masturbation, resulting from social
repression, is an expression of "deformed desire." Thus,
masturbation expresses and determines Urizen's negativity in the creation sequence in Ahouio.
It is in The Four Zoas, that vast, many-faceted work that
occupied Blake for more than ten years, that Hobson finds
the first clear emergence of homoerotic expression and sympathy. Most prominently, homosexual acts are depicted as
expressions of rebellion against the oppressive father,
Urizen. Hobson suggests that in Blake's middle and later
work depictions of homosexuality frequently accompany
statements in the text of resistance to social oppression.
Certain illustrations in the poem are studied carefully for
evidence of homosexual activity or interest. One of Hobson's key examples is the illustration to page 78 o\ The Four
Zoos, which, as he interprets it, shows a male figure, as-
Summer 2003
sumed to be Ore, about to engage in fellatio with another
male figure who is leaning over him. The accompanying
text concerns Urizen's successful subjugation of Ore in
Night 7. Hobson reads a sequence such as Ore's adoption
of a phallic, snake-like form in Night 7a, at Urizen's injunction, as a criticism of male sexual possessiveness. In illustrations such as those for page 88 of The FourZoas, where
three figures are depicted worshipping an exaggerated phallic form, Hobson posits censure of masculine erotic aggression, the dangerous "secret religion" to which the text refers.
Hobson identifies various female figures in the poem as
engaging in lesbian sexual activity, like male homosexuals,
in defiance of the power of Urizen, and he discounts heterosexual interpretations such as those of Magno and
Erdman. A problem in reading these illustrations of female activity as benignly intended by Blake is that the text
of The FourZoas contains significant misogynistic allusions,
some on the same pages as the illustrations, as Hobson acknowledges. Thus it seems unnecessary to posit a positive
interpretation of the female figures. Elements from the Four
Zoas illustrations may be transferred with their original
impetus to the finished works: the exquisite design for the
title page of Jerusalem, plate 2, holds menace in its surreal
female forms and the tripartite motifs associated with abstraction and denial of sensuality.
Blake's responses to Milton are central to Hobson's case.
He discusses extensively both Blake's illustrations to Milton's
works and the poem Milton. Hobson finds a homosexual
character in the depictions of the brothers in the Comus
illustrations with their classical warrior motifs, and also in
the designs for Paradise Regained, in which Blake revises
Milton's disdain for the body. His interpretation of the historical significance of the Bard's Song, departing from
Erdman, is that Satan, here and elsewhere, is the English
state in Blake's own time, applying the strictures of Moral
Law to aspects of personal life, including homosexuality.
Satan's expulsion of Leutha, his female principle, and her
guilt at sexuality, are seen as an ironic condemnation of
moral repression.
Milton is essential to any discussion of homosexuality in
Blake, and Hobson persuasively places it in a new historical context. He puts forward the view that the revisions to
the poem after 1811 in the C and D versions, entailing a
stronger condemnation of Moral Law, may be related
among other causes to a period of heightened prosecution
and persecution of homosexuals during 1810-1811, the
most notorious being associated with activities at the White
Swan Inn in Vere Street. Prisoners were reviled by angry
mobs, including many women. Blake does not mention
Vere Street, but Hobson suggests that the episodes may have
intensified his sympathy for the victims of homophobia and
that "Calvary's Foot" in plate 4 is a veiled reference to the
mob persecution, rather than specifically to Tyburn, the
usual reading.
Summer 2003
In discussing the two "homosexual" plates, 45 and 47,
Hobson considers whether the contacts involve fellatio, and
inclines towards the view that 45 depicts Urizen's fainting
at the naked male body, while 47 may show Blake's genital
kiss of the glorified form of Los. However, a most significant consideration is surely that in plate 47, as well as in 32,
37 and 45, Blake uses a homosexual image to express a
theme of the utmost artistic importance—the incorporation of creative power. This possibly indicates not merely
empathy with homosexuals on Blake's part but his own
homoerotic, or bisexual, sensibility.
Hobson places homosexuality, with an emphasis on lesbianism, among the major themes that Blake resolves in
Jerusalem. He focuses upon the sequence leading to the
death of Albion in which Albion confronts Jerusalem in
the arms of Vala (plates 19-25). This female embrace is
depicted in the lily design, plate 28 of copy D, of which
Erdman notes that the figure on the left was originally male
and the embrace less chaste. The sequence has been read
by others as lesbian. Convincing as this may be, the emphasis seems to be not upon eroticism so much as a powerful female partnership that will destroy Albion. Hobson
goes on to show that in this culminating epic emanations
are not specifically female, as seen in Shiloh, and states that
hermaphrodites are sexually differentiated, removing threat
and bias from gender relations.
Hobson's argument for Blake's sympathetic espousal of
lesbians is less convincing than that for his empathy with
male homosexuals. Female homosexuals were not subjected
to the same legal and social persecution as males, and therefore presumably would not have evoked the same response.
Hobson reads the attribution of sexuality and male organs
to women as evidence of Blake's positive feeling. However,
the illustrations of erotic lesbian poses and enlarged clitorises in The Four Zoas do not necessarily suggest a sympathy with lesbians: they may imply a prurient fascination
pursued more fully in these private sketches than in the
illustrations intended for public view. A phallic woman, as
a mother figure, can be seen as threatening to men; a phallic woman as an object of desire may be reassuring, since
she is already in possession of mastery. Both fantasies spring
from anxiety.
Hobson's book opens up the important topic of Blake
and homosexuality as never before. Blake's empathy with
male homosexuality and his own sensibility that embraces
the homoerotic are fundamental and revealing elements in
his work.

Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly

Transcripción

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