A Bibliographical Study Of William Blake S Note Book

Blake's Notebook, long familiar to Blake students under the name of the Rossetti MS, is the object of this careful investigation into the bibliographical problem the notebook offers. Illus.

A Blake Bibliography was first published in 1964. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The aim of this book is to list every reference to William Blake published between 1757 and 1863 and every criticism and edition of his works from the beginning to the present. Partly because of the deluge of scholarship in the last forty years, it includes perhaps twice as many titles as Sir Geoffrey Keynes's great bibliography of 1921. An introductory essay on the history of Blake scholarship puts the most significant works into perspective, indicates the best work that has been done, and points to some neglected areas. In addition, all the most important references and many of the less significant ones are briefly annotated as to subject and value. Because many of the works are difficult to locate, specimen copies of all works published before 1831 have been traced to specific libraries. Each of Blake's manuscripts is also traced to its present owner. Two areas which have received relatively novel attention are early references to Blake (before 1863) and important sale and exhibition catalogues of his works. In both areas there are significant number of important entries which have not been noticed before by Blake scholars. The section on Blake's engravings for commercial works receives especially detailed treatment. A few of the titles listed here have not been described previously in connection with Blake.

Angela Esterhammer, a student of Frye's in the 1980s, has provided annotation and an introduction that demonstrates the poets' importance for Frye's literary and cultural criticism and provides a twenty-first-century perspective on the legacy of his work.

This collection of essays examines how close analysis of William Blake’s manuscripts can yield new discoveries about his techniques, his working habits, and his influences. With the introduction of facsimile editions and more particularly, the William Blake Archive, the largest digital repository of Blake materials online, scholars have been able to access Blake’s work in as close its original medium, leading to important insights into Blake’s creative process and mythopoetic system. Recent advancements in digital editing and reproduction has further increased interest in Blake’s manuscripts. This volume brings together both established Blake scholars, including G.E. Bentley Jnr’s final essay on Blake, and upcoming scholars whose research is at the intersection of digital humanities, critical theory, textual scholarship, queer theory, transgender studies, reception history, and bibliographical studies. The chapters seek to cover the breadth of Blake’s manuscripts: poetry, letters, notebook entries, and annotations. Together, these chapters offer an overview of the current state of research in Blake studies on manuscripts at a point when his manuscripts have become increasingly available in digital environments, and gesture to a possible future of Blake scholarship in general.

Experience taught William Blake that "Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy." His brilliant achievements as a poet, painter, and engraver brought him public notice, but little income. William Blake in the Desolate Market records how Blake, the most original of all the major English poets, earned his living. G.E. Bentley Jr, the dean of Blake scholars, details the poet's occupations as a commercial engraver, print-seller, teacher, copperplate printer, painter, publisher, and vendor of his own books. In his early career as a commercial engraver, Blake was modestly prosperous, but thereafter his fortunes declined. For his most ambitious commercial designs, he made hundreds of folio designs and scores of engravings, but was paid scarcely more than twenty pounds for two or three years' work. His invention of illuminated printing lost money, and many of his greatest works, such as Jerusalem, were left unsold at his death. He came to believe that his "business is not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes." William Blake in the Desolate Market is an investigation of Blake's labours to support himself by his arts. The changing prices of his works, his costs and receipts, as well as his patrons and employers are expertly gathered and displayed to show the material side of the artistic career in Britain's Romantic period.