Message-Id: <200004181142.EAA16978@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 07:40:25 EDT From: Kari Kraus <mailto:KKraus27@AOL.COM> Subject: William Blake Archive Update To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
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The William Blake Archive <www.iath.virginia.edu/blake> is pleased to
announce that it has received a two-year Preservation and Access Grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The editors and staff are
most grateful for the support it provides as we begin to expand the
Archive over the next few years to include Blake's drawings, paintings,
and engravings.
We are also very pleased to announce the publication of new
electronic editions of _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ copies H and
I, both in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. Printed in 1790 and
1827 respectively, they join copies of _Marriage_ in the Archive from
other printings: copies C (1790), D (1795), and F (c. 1794). Copy G, from
a c. 1818 printing, and copy K (plates 21-24) and copies L and M (separate
printings of "A Song of Liberty") from a 1790 printing are forthcoming.
The electronic editions have newly edited SGML-encoded texts and new
images scanned and color-corrected from first-generation
4 x 5 inch transparencies; texts and images are fully searchable and
supported by the Inote and ImageSizer applications described in our
previous updates.
With the publication of these two titles, the Archive now contains fully
searchable and scalable electronic editions of 41 copies of 18 of Blake's
19 illuminated books in the context of full bibliographic information
about each work, careful diplomatic transcriptions of all texts, detailed
descriptions of all images, and extensive bibliographies. They also join
our searchable SGML-encoded electronic edition of David V. Erdman's
_Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake_. With the forthcoming
publication of _Jerusalem_ copy E, the Archive will contain at least one
copy of each of Blake's works in illuminated printing and multiple copies
of most.
_Marriage_ copy H, perhaps the most illuminated of Blake's illuminated
books, appears initially to have relied on colored inks rather than
watercolor washes for its coloring. It was produced with copy B in
1790, with plates printed in various shades of red, olive, and green inks
on both sides of the leaves. The impressions forming copy B (Bodleian
Library, Oxford University) are uncolored, and those forming copy H may
also have been left in this state originally. But copy H was sold to the
painter John Linnell, Blake's young patron, in 1821 for two pounds and
two shillings (less than half of what he was asking for books of similar
size and number of pages), and apparently at that time Blake extensively
reworked the pages by coloring the illustrations, adding gold leaf (e.g.,
title page), streaking the background of the texts in yellows and blues,
and, what is most unusual, going over the texts in various colored inks,
letter by letter, line by line. The results are pages among the most
colorful that Blake ever produced and texts among the most challenging
editorially, with many key words and phrases visually highlighted (e.g.,
"Contraries" and "Human existence" of plate 3 set off by dark ink in lines
rewritten in red ink). Such detailed refinishing also resulted in a book
with stylistic features characteristic of productions both early (facing
pages and plates printed without borders) and late (elaborate coloring and
page numbers).
One stylistic element characteristic of illuminated books produced c. 1818
and later is the frameline, usually one thin line in red or black ink
drawn a few centimeters around the image. Copy H has no framelines,
probably because they would prove visually jarring for pages that face one
another. But they are used to superb effect in _Marriage_ copy I, where
they set off each page as a miniature painting. Copy I, printed and
colored in 1827 for Thomas Wainewright, was one of the last illuminated
books produced by Blake. It was printed in orangish-red ink on one side
of J. Whatman paper dated 1825, numbered 1-27, and finished in gold,
watercolors, and pen and ink to match Wainewright's copy of _Songs_ (copy
X). It was produced in the same style Blake used in c. 1818, 1821-22,
and 1825-26. Works from these sessions include _The Book of Thel_ copy O
and _Songs of Innocence and of Experience_ copies Z and AA, which are in
the Archive, and _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ copy G, _Jerusalem_
copy E, _America, a Prophecy_ copy O, _Europe, a Prophecy_ copy K, and
_Visions of the Daughters of Albion_ copy P, all of which will enter the
Archive within the year. Printing plates in full (i.e., with their plate
borders), a feature of this late production style, can make pages
appear slightly larger and introduce compositional elements missing in
copies printed earlier. For _Marriage_ copy I, as well as copy G, the
inclusion of the plate borders introduced the outer lines forming rocks
and cavern shapes on plates 10, 11, 15, and 20, images named in the text
but pictured only in these last two copies.
Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, Editors
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Technical Editor
The William Blake Archive
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