Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
William Blake’s
Manuscripts
Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests
Edited by
Mark Crosby · Josephine McQuail
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
William Blake’s Manuscripts
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Mark Crosby • Josephine A. McQuail
Editors
William Blake’s
Manuscripts
Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
To G. E. Bentley Jr., whose scholarly energies and inestimable
generosity built “Mansions in Eternity.”
And Morris Eaves, whose “burning and shining light” illuminates
the path for other “Enthusiastic, hope-fostered” visionaries.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Contents
1 Introduction:
“Writing Is the Divine Revelation” 1
Mark Crosby and Josephine A. McQuail
Part I Scribal Praxis 19
2 Blake
and “the Wondrous Art of Writing”: Letter Faces,
Letter Formation, Capitalization 21
G. E. Bentley Jr.
3 “My Fingers Emit Sparks of Fire”: William Blake, Letter
Writer 47
Angus Whitehead
4 “on
Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions”:
Re-assessing Blake’s Marginalia 71
Elizabeth Potter
5 Behn,
Bysshe, and the Blakes: Bibliomancy and the Joys
of Unbinding 89
Jennifer Davis Michael
ix
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
x
Contents
6 “minutely
Appropriate Execution”: Variation and
Pentimento in Blake’s Title Pages111
Mark Crosby
Part II Palimpsest 133
7 The
Page Embodied in The Four Zoas135
Silvia Riccardi
8 Blake
and the Antiquarians: The Manuscript of
The Four Zoas and the “Monumental Folios” of the
Dilettanti and the Antiquarians149
Josephine A. McQuail
9 Catastrophe,
Sublimity, and Digital Thinking in Blake’s
Vala or The Four Zoas179
Peter Otto
10 Graphing VALA, or The Four Zoas: Toward a Dynamic
Edition205
Michael Fox
11 “All
that we See is Vision”: William Blake’s Four Zoas
Manuscript and Multispectral Imaging (MSI)231
Oishani Sengupta, Helen Davies, Alexander J. Zawacki,
Christina Duffy, Eric Loy, and Samuel Allen
Part III Puzzles 255
12 “O
what a scene is here”: Visual References in Blake’s
An Island in the Moon257
Fernando Castanedo
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Contents xi
13 “Hang
Philosophy”: Blake’s Metaphysical Forays in
An Island in the Moon279
Joseph Fletcher
14 “Composite
Gender” as the Book of Oothoon: Dress,
Drag, and the Transgender Marygold Flower-Nymph301
Tommy Mayberry
15 “By
the Voice of the Servant of the Lord”: Blake’s New
Jerusalem and Swedenborgianism in the Work of Sheila
Kaye-Smith329
Jason Whittaker
Works Cited347
Index367
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Notes on Contributors
Samuel Allen is a J.D. candidate at Suffolk University Law School, USA,
where he is the online editor of the Suffolk University Law Review and a
3:03 Certified Student Attorney for the Suffolk University Intellectual
Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic. He focuses broadly on corporate
law, with emphasis on intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, and
antitrust. Recently, he wrote his Note advocating for legislative antitrust
reform and modernization to address tech platform monopolies in Volume
55 of the Suffolk University Law Review. From 2018 to 2020, he worked
with the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester to recover hidden
or damaged text from historical manuscripts. During that time, he developed a new method for isolating obscured text using Photoshop and
authored a teaching manual currently used in the University’s Digital
Imaging curriculum.
G. E. Bentley Jr. was professor of English at the University of Toronto.
Every Blakean—past, present, and future—was, is, and will be indebted to
his detailed scholarship. Among his hundreds of publications, of particular
note is Blake Books, wherein he undertook to discover, describe, and document every single one of Blake’s illuminated (or etched) works, even those
untraced. In Blake’s Writings, he provided scholarly texts of Blake’s writings in conventional typography and Blake Records amasses references to
Blake, both contemporary and historical. The editors are honored to
xiii
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
xiv
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
include one of his last pieces of scholarship in this volume. He passed away
in 2017, but his work and influence live on.
Fernando Castanedo is Associate Professor of English at the Universidad
de Alcalá, Spain. He has written essays and notes on William Blake’s works,
and has translated and edited bilingual critical volumes of The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell, An Island in the Moon, and The Pickering Manuscript,
all three for Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid.
Mark Crosby FSA is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and an associate professor at Kansas State University, USA. He has written on Blake,
William Hayley, Thomas Paine, and William Godwin. Crosby co-edited
Re-envisioning Blake (Palgrave 2012) and, with Robert N. Essick, Genesis:
William Blake’s Last Illuminated Work (2012). He is currently working on
a volume of essays on Hayley and a monograph on Blake’s patrons.
Helen Davies is an assistant professor in the Department of English and
the co-­director of the Digital Humanities Center at the University of
Colorado, Colorado Springs, USA. Her work focuses on the intersection
of medieval studies and digital humanities. She uses multispectral imaging
to recover lost, damaged, and otherwise illegible texts. Her work centers
on cartographic history and her book project focuses on the recovery and
exploration of contents of the Vercelli Mappa Mundi. Helen and Heather
Wacha are writing a new digital edition of the Vercelli Mappa Mundi on
Digital Mappa. Helen’s work can be seen in Dark Archives, Digital
Philology, and Imago Mundi, among other places. She has recently given
talks sponsored by Harvard University, Digital Medievalist, and led a
course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute.
Christina Duffy graduated from Imperial College London, UK, with a
Ph.D. in Earth Science and Engineering studying meteorites, and became
the British Library’s Imaging Scientist, where she remained for over a
decade. During this time, she developed a research imaging lab and specialized in analytical imaging techniques such as digital microscopy, multispectral imaging, and computed tomography. Project highlights include
working with Magna Carta, St Cuthbert’s Gospel, Shakespeare’s will, and
Leonardo da Vinci’s papers. Christina is now a Senior Content Strategist
at Amazon Web Services (AWS), creating and managing technical documentation including Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Methods of
Procedure (MOPs), and Emergency Operating Procedures (EOPs) to
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xv
support the AWS Cloud which spans 99 Availability Zones within 31 geographical regions around the world.
Joseph Fletcher is the author of William Blake as Natural Philosopher:
1788–1795 (2022). He teaches at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill and is the managing editor of The William Blake Archive.
Michael Fox teaches at the School of Information and Library Science,
University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, USA. Since 2013, he
has been an assistant editor at the William Blake Archive. And he holds a
Ph.D. in English from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Eric C. Loy is an independent scholar and documentary film producer in
New York, USA. He completed his Ph.D. in 2021 from the University of
Rochester, where he served as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Digital
Humanities as well as project coordinator for the William Blake Archive
from 2016 to 2021. His dissertation focuses on materiality and media in
contemporary print literature. His writing has been published in ASAP/
Journal 19, The Cormac McCarthy Journal, and Textual Cultures.
Tommy Mayberry is Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence and
Innovation at Yorkville University and Toronto Film School, Canada. As
an academic drag queen, Tommy teaches and researches from an embodied standpoint exploring gender, pedagogy, performance, language, as
well as eighteenth-century British literature, art, and visual culture, RuPaul
and drag cultures, and reality TV (to name just a few!). Tommy has presented work across Canada and internationally in Oxford, Tokyo,
Washington DC, and Honolulu and was a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow during their Ph.D. They are partner to visual artist Tommy Bourque (together,
they’re “the Tommies”).
Josephine A. McQuail Professor of English at Tennessee Technological
University, USA, has written on William Blake in Blake: An Illustrated
Quarterly and Vala. The long nineteenth-century, utopias and dystopias,
Virginia Woolf, and Janet Frame are also interests; see her edited collection Janet Frame in Focus. Since U.C. Berkeley days, she has been a committed social activist, working through the American Association of
University Professors, United Campus Workers, and the National
Education Association, and more discipline-specific professional organizations like the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the Northeast
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
xvi
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
MLA (NeMLA). Her “Women and Contingent Faculty” appeared in
NeMLA’s Modern Language Studies.
Jennifer Davis Michael is Professor of English at Sewanee: The
University of the South, Tennessee, USA, and the author of Blake and the
City (2006). Her scholarly work has also appeared in Blake: An Illustrated
Quarterly and on the William Blake Archive. She has written two chapbooks of her own poems, Let Me Let Go (2020) and Dubious Breath (2021).
Peter Otto is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University
of Melbourne, Australia, executive director of the Research Unit in
“Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Contemporary Culture,” and a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In addition to two
monographs on Blake, his publications include Multiplying Worlds:
Romanticism, Modernity and the Emergence of Virtual Reality (2011);
Innovations in Encompassing Large Scenes (2013); and, as editor, 21st
Century Oxford Authors: William Blake (2018). He is currently completing a book, funded by the Australian Research Council, on “Architectures
of Imagination: Bodies, Buildings, Fictions, and Worlds.”
Elizabeth Potter received her Ph.D. from the Center for EighteenthCentury Studies, the University of York, UK. Her work focuses on William
Blake’s marginalia to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1798). Beyond
Blake, she is also interested in Indigenous studies, transatlantic studies,
visual culture, and affect theory.
Silvia Riccardi is a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University,
Sweden, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and
visual culture. She is the author of articles and chapters on Blake, Fuseli,
and the reception of Dante in Romantic England, including Blake’s illustrations of the Commedia in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly. She is currently working on Blake’s graphic and textual forms of biomorphism,
alongside a book project on Dark Romanticism.
Oishani Sengupta is an assistant professor in the Department of English
at the University of Texas at El Paso, USA. Her research examines the role
of print technologies in the global circulation of racial stereotypes across
transatlantic and Indian Ocean networks. She also works on digital archives
of visual material and was a project coordinator of the William Blake
Archive at the University of Rochester during the completion of this
chapter.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xvii
Angus Whitehead is a lecturer at the National Institute of Education,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Publications include a collection of essays on William Blake (co-editor); two collections of
Anglophone Singapore literature (co-editor); a volume of essays on performance artist Peaches Nisker; and William and Catherine Blake’s letters.
His research focuses on archival recovery of the immediate social and historical contexts within which William and Catherine Blake lived and
worked; George Chapman; Thomas Middleton; sexualities in contemporary millennial Singapore poetry and homosocial metaphor; and wit and
allusion in Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Julian Cope, and Mark E. Smith.
Jason Whittaker is head of the School of English and Journalism at the
University of Lincoln, UK. He has written extensively on William Blake
and his reception, and his most recent works are Divine Images: The Life
& Work of William Blake (2021) and Jerusalem: Blake, Parry and the Fight
for Englishness (2022).
Alexander J. Zawacki is Lecturer in Digital Humanities and an imaging
scientist at the University of Göttingen, Germany. His work focuses on
ghosts and the supernatural in the history in the High and Late Middle
Ages. His work is forthcoming in Dark Archives, Digital Philology, and
elsewhere.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Abbreviations1
E
BR
BB
BIQ
WBA
Butlin
Gilchrist
HLQ
Island
Thel
MHH
America
Europe
Urizen
Milton
Jerusalem
VDA
OED
ODNB
Erdman, David. V., ed., The Complete Poetry and Prose of William
Blake, revised edition (New York, 1982)
Bentley, G.E., Jr., Blake Records, 2nd edition (New Haven, 2004)
Bentley, G.E., Jr., Blake Books: Annotated Catalogues of William
Blake’s Writings (Oxford, 1977)
Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly
www.williamblakearchive.org
Butlin, Martin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, 2
vols. (New Haven, 1981)
Gilchrist, Alexander, Life of William Blake ‘Pictor Ignotus’, 2 vols.
(London, 1863)
Huntington Library Quarterly
An Island in the Moon
The Book of Thel
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
America a Prophecy
Europe a Prophecy
The First Book of Urizen
Milton a Poem
Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion
Visions of the Daughters of Albion
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
1
Unless otherwise noted, all references to Blake’s text are taken from E. In the case of
poetry, line numbers are also provided. Original spelling and grammar have been maintained
throughout.
xix
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1
Fig. 2.1
Fig. 2.2
Fig. 4.1
Fig. 4.2
Fig. 5.1
Fig. 5.2
Fig. 6.1
Fig. 6.2
Fig. 8.1
William Blake, “When the Morning Stars Sang together”
(1823), from the Illustrations to the Book of Job. © Fitzwilliam
Museum. Used with permission
“The sick rose” at the middle right of p. 109 of Blake’s
Notebook (1793?) © British Library Department of
Manuscripts. Used with permission
“The SICK ROSE”, pl. 39 (here numbered “48”) from Songs of
Innocence and of Experience. Copy L (1795). © Yale Center for
British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Used with permission
Page xiv from volume I of The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds with
Blake’s manuscript annotations, 1798. British Library
Department of Manuscripts. Used with permission
Detail from William Blake. Laocoön, copy B. c.1826–1827.
Collection of Robert N. Essick. Used with permission
William Blake, p. 90 from The Notebook. © The British
Museum. Used with permission
Edward Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry (1708). © British
Library Department of Manuscripts. Used with permission
William Blake, Genesis, title page 1. (c. 1827). © The Henry E
Huntington Library. San Marino, CA. Used with permission
William Blake, Genesis, title page 2. (c. 1827). © The Henry E
Huntington Library. San Marino, CA. Used with permission
“Phallic Objects Found in England,” from Richard Payne
Knight’s Discourse on the Worship of Priapus Part II, ed.
J.B. Hare, (1786). Pl. 7, 107. Public domain
5
25
26
81
87
90
97
123
124
173
xxi
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
xxii
List of Figures
Fig. 9.1
Fig. 10.1
Fig. 10.2
Fig. 10.3
Fig. 10.4
Fig. 10.5
Fig. 11.1
Fig. 11.2
Fig. 11.3
Fig. 11.4
Fig. 11.5
Francis Hayman, ‘Frontispiece’ to Edward Young, The
Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality
(London, 1779). Public Domain
184
William Blake, VALA, or the Four Zoas, title page
(1796–1807). © British Library Department of Manuscripts.
Used with permission
207
William Blake, An Angel Awakening the Dead with a Trumpet
(ca. 1805). © British Museum. Used with permission
210
Subgraph 1. This subgraph depicts the expression plane and
content plane of some visual events on the frontispiece of The
Four Zoas, including the written text VALA and the illustration
222
Subgraph 2. This subgraph depicts three connected subgraphs.
One captures all the visual events on the frontispiece, including
all the written text and its revision stages as well as the
illustration. The second captures the subgraph of an external
work, An Angel Awakening the Dead with a Trumpet. And the
third captures the related passage from The Grave. The finer
details at the atomic level are hidden (the word nodes are made
up of a series of CHARACTER nodes as depicted in Fig. 10.3,
with their own expression plane and content plane)
223
Subgraph 3. This subgraph is the same subgraph in Fig. 10.4,
with the addition of a few ANNOTATION nodes to illustrate
how documentary and non-­documentary features may be
modeled in the same graph
225
Page 8 of The Four Zoas as it appears under natural light as
displayed on the William Blake Archive. © British Library
Department of Manuscripts. Used with permission
236
Page 8 of The Four Zoas after Principal Component Analysis
(PCA). © Helen Davies, Alexander J. Zawacki and the Lazarus
Project. Used with permission
241
(a, b) Indistinct pencil traces of words visible in the extract
from page 8 of The Four Zoas after PCA. © Helen Davies,
Alexander J. Zawacki and the Lazarus Project. Used with
permission245
The barely legible lines obscured by an orb at the top of
page 9 of The Four Zoas. © Helen Davies, Alexander J. Zawacki
and the Lazarus Project. Used with permission
246
A detail of the flaming feet of Christ, recovered from the
bottom of page 11 of The Four Zoas. © Helen Davies,
Alexander J. Zawacki and the Lazarus Project. Used with
permission248
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
List of Figures xxiii
Fig. 11.6 Two cloud-like figures with rain falling from them, from page
14 of The Four Zoas. © Helen Davies and the Lazarus Project.
Used with permission
249
Fig. 12.1 John Flaxman, A Self-portrait at the Age of Twenty-Four (1779).
© UCL Art Museum, University College London. Used with
permission263
Fig. 12.2 John Hall after Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Johnson (“Blinking
Sam”). (1787). Yale Center for British Art. Used with
permission265
Fig. 12.3 Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air
Pump (1768). © The National Gallery, London. Used with
permission270
Fig. 14.1 William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, title page,
copy R. (1794). © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München,
Chalc. 159, fol. Used with permission
317
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: “Writing Is the Divine
Revelation”
Mark Crosby and Josephine A. McQuail
I write from the warmth of my heart
—William Blake, Annotations to Lavater, E 600
William Blake enjoyed writing. He wrote in numerous hands with various
implements, from pencils to pen and ink, horsehair brushes to etching
needles and, on at least one occasion, a diamond-tipped writing instrument. He wrote in different venues and on different media, such as bound
paper, loose paper, in the margins of printed books, on copperplates, and
on glass. He wrote forward and backward, he overwrote his own writing
and designs, he frequently combined letters and words with pictorial
flourishes, he wrote in English, and occasionally in Hebrew, Latin, and
Greek, and he invented his own hieroglyphic inscription. He wrote to
M. Crosby (*)
Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
e-mail: crosbym@ksu.edu
J. A. McQuail
Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN, USA
e-mail: jmcquail@tntech.edu
1
M. Crosby, J. McQuail (eds.), William Blake’s Manuscripts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47436-1_1
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
2
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
communicate with and comment on his contemporaries, he wrote
responses to living and dead authors, he wrote to friends and patrons, he
wrote in other people’s books, he wrote in the prophetic mode, he composed proverbs, couplets, epigrams, inscriptions for and detailed descriptions of his paintings, short lyrics, nursery rhymes, plays, ballads, sprawling
poetic epics, a version of the Lord’s Prayer; his own chapter headings for
the first book of the pentateuch, a gospel, an advertisement, a prospectus,
memoranda, public address, and postscripts. He traced other people’s
writing, he sometimes wrote candidly, at times parodically, and occasionally ambiguously. He also wrote about writing, describing it in Jerusalem
as “the wond’rous art” (E 145, l. 4).
Characters from his mythopoetic system are preoccupied with writing.
After listening to the music and singing of the piper in the Introduction
from Songs of Innocence, the floating infant proclaims, “sit thee down and
write/In a book that all may read” (E 7, ll. 13–14) before vanishing. In
Urizen, the titular character inscribes his laws for a rational, contained
universe in books “formd of me-tals” (E 72, l. 24).1 In Milton, the narrator describes the appearance of Ololon clothed in a “garment dipped in
blood” that is covered in woven letters: “the writing is the Divine
Revelation in the Litteral expression” (E 142, ll. 13–14). Some years later,
according to Henry Crabb Robinson, Blake revealed what he considers to
be a divinely inspired, anarchic immediacy to his writing:
I write […] when commanded by the spirits and the moment I have written
I see the words fly abot. the room in all directions—It is then published and
the Spirits can read—My MSS [are] of no further use—I have been tempted
to burn my MSS but my wife wont let me. (BR2 435)
For Blake, it seems, his process of writing is informed by the Classical tradition of invocation and the Biblical tradition of prophecy being simultaneously inspired, confusing, and involuntary. Writing only commences
with the commands of “the spirits” before eliding into publication: the act
of rendering the words in material form on paper, copperplate, or glass
appears to constitute their publication. Blake and the piper from Songs of
Innocence actualize this process as both creator and character materially fix
heard utterances into textual artifacts to be read by an audience. In Blake’s
1
On plate 4 of Urizen, Blake divides “me−/tals” into two lines, creating a pun with Urizen
writing himself into his books: “books formd of me” (E 72, l. 24).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
3
case, he also needs to track and presumably arrange the words into grammatical units as they “fly abot. the room”. In the Crabb Robinson description, the spirits operate as both the source of textual authority and as the
initial, and, if we take Blake’s statement about burning his MSS, perhaps
only intended readership. Ephemerality haunts this understanding of writing, for once Blake has transcribed (and so published and read) the words,
they become redundant as text and, in his mind, ripe for incineration.
Fortunately, as far as we are currently aware, Blake heeded Catherine’s
advice and didn’t act on the temptation to burn his manuscripts—that
dishonor has been accorded to Frederick Tatham—and many extant specimens have survived (although not as many as Blake told Crabb Robinson
that he had written). For Blake writing was immediate and compelled,
empowering and limiting, a form of creative expression that could lead to
transcendental insights and the manifestation of our fall into material and
temporal existence, that is, into a Urizenic world of abstraction and
generalization.2
As a facet of Blake’s creative output alongside his pictorial art and printmaking, his writings are prodigious. While considerable scholarly attention has been directed specifically at Blake’s writing in the illuminated
books, there has until recently been little critical attention given to the
manuscripts. As Sarah Haggarty noted in 2019 “there is still no systematic
study of Blake’s manuscripts”.3 Part of the reason for the absence of such
a study is that since the nineteenth-century, scholarly energies have tended
to draw on the numerous textual editions of Blake’s writings that have
mediated his scholarly and public reception. The streamlining of Blake’s
literary oeuvre by the reduction or omission of unconventional features of
his text so that it conforms to standard typography has also effaced numerous complexities. In the case of Blake’s Illuminated Books, many of the
previous century’s scholarly investigations were based on textual editions
that denuded images, regularized spelling and punctuation, ignored letter
formations and sizes to ensure the poetry was cheaper for publishers to
produce and easier for readers to consume. The editorial treatment of
manuscripts has also informed the ways in which we have engaged with
these ephemeral works. For instance, scholarly editions of Blake’s
marginalia and inscriptions disaggregate his writing from much of its context. In the case of the annotations, readers are presented with partial
2
3
See Essick, Blake and the Language of Adam (1989) 15.
Haggarty (2019) 43.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
4
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
conversations that favor Blake as the respondent over the textual stimuli
prompting his responses. In complex palimpsests such as Vala, or The Four
Zoas, editors are not only faced with the challenge of unraveling layers of
overwriting, deletions, and insertions as they seek to present legible reading texts, but also account for or ignore the sketches that are wholly or
partially erased, or unfinished, and the interpolation of proofs of Blake’s
Night Thoughts engravings. Similarly, in the Notebook and An Island in
the Moon manuscript, editors preparing textual editions of Blake’s writing
are often forced or elect to ignore the drawings, doodles, and other scribal
notations in order to furnish a legible reading text. With the introduction
of facsimile editions during the mid-1960s and more particularly, the
William Blake Archive, the largest digital repository of Blake materials on
the web, scholars have been able to access Blake’s work in as close to its
original medium as intended (absent, of course, the physical object on
paper), leading to important insights into Blake’s creative process and
greater understanding of his mythopoetic system. Recent advances in digital editing and reproduction have led to increasing interest in Blake’s manuscripts and the challenges they pose.
Blake’s manuscripts are diverse, comprising poems of varying lengths
(from couplets to over 4000 lines), including several versions of his most
anthologized poem, “The Tyger”; there are also receipts, inscriptions for
paintings and preparatory sketches, ninety-six letters, an entry in an autograph album, notebooks, fugitive pieces and, at last count, sixteen books
containing Blake’s energetic annotations. The material complexity of these
scribal productions coupled with difficulties identifying composition dates
present significant editorial and interpretative challenges. The late Songs of
Experience poem “To Tirzah” (c.1800), for instance, contains a line which
has caused editors of Blake’s verse much consternation, for it is not a part
of the poem but is inscribed on the design of a bearded figure holding a
pitcher toward a fainting male figure embraced by two women, drooping
over him: “It is Raised a Spiritual Body”. This line inscribed over an
image appears to contradict the text of the entire poem, which dwells on
embodiment and mortality. Even with advancements in digital editing,
Blake’s manuscripts continue to challenge readers with intriguing puzzles.
What are we to make of Blake’s pictographic signature (Fig. 1.1) on a
preparatory drawing for plate 14 of the Illustrations to the Book of Job,
“When the Morning Stars Sang together”?4 The pictogram is preceded by
4
Butlin 773 (Cat. No. 557 33).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
5
Fig. 1.1 William Blake, “When the Morning Stars Sang together” (1823), from
the Illustrations to the Book of Job. © Fitzwilliam Museum. Used with permission
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
6
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
“Done by” (E 688) and comprises five drawn symbols: a horizontal line,
an open hand, what could be a crudely drawn uppercase B, an open eye,
and a circle flanked with asymmetrical tittles. For some commentators, this
inscription has symbolic resonance, conveying Blake’s notion of poetic
genius.5 It is far from clear, however, that the uppercase B is the letter B at
all; it could be read as a reversed uppercase R or, in keeping with the other
symbols, is a pictorial representation rather than a textual notation. There
are some compositional similarities with this symbol and Blake’s Sketch of
A Man with a Transparent Hood over his Head.6 Such a comparison
prompts yet another attempt to decipher Blake’s hieroglyphics, with the
horizontal line possibly representing his favored aesthetic of the bounding
line, the hand denoting the artisanal approach of the artist/engraver, the
covered head suggestive of the artist at work, the open eye implying the
visionary aspect of imaginative creation, and the circle with two tittles possibly implying a universality of expression. Without a Blakean Rossetta
stone, such attempts to interpret this pictogram are speculative at best and
perhaps distract from other, perhaps more pressing questions such as why
did Blake write his signature as a pictograph in this particular preparatory
drawing? Who was the intended audience? Was it John Linnell, the patron
who commissioned the Illustrations of the Book of Job engravings and
owned the sketchbook Blake used to make the preparatory drawings?
There are many such puzzles in Blake’s manuscripts that have yet to be
fully explored.
Fortunately, not all of Blake’s manuscripts present such thorny challenges. For instance, in his Notebook Blake transcribed the following
paragraph from the newspaper, Bells Weekly Messenger of 4 Aug 1811:
Salisbury July 29
A Bill of Indictment was preferred against Peter Le Cave for Felony but
returnd Ignoramus by the Grand jury. It appeard that he was in extreme
indigence but was an Artist of very superior Merit [.] while he was in Wilton
[ Jail ] <Goal>he painted many Pieces in the Style of Morland some of
which are stated to be even superior to the performances of that Artist. with
whom Le Cave lived many years as a Professional Assistant & he states that
many Paintings of his were only Varnished over by Morland & sold by that
Artist as his own. Many of the Principal Gentlemen of the County have
visited Le Cave in the Goal & declared his drawings & Paintings in many
5
6
See Lindberg (1973) 161 and 292.
Butlin 1056 (Cat. No. 812 52).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
7
instances to excel Morlands. The Writer of this Article has seen many of Le
Caves Works & tho he does not pretend to the knowledge of an artist yet he
considers them as Chaste delineations of Rural Objects. (E 694–5)
The decision to transcribe this specific paragraph indicates its importance
to Blake as it seemingly confirms a theory he had apparently developed
years earlier when he engraved two prints after George Morland.7 Under
the transcription, Blake added:
Such is the Paragraph It confirms the Suspition I entertained concerning
those two [prints] I Engraved From for J. R. Smith. That Morland could
not have Painted them as they were the works of a Correct Mind & no
Blurrer. (E 695)
If we take the date of 4 August 1811 as the terminus post quem for this
transcription and comment, Blake was reading and responding to Bells
Weekly Messenger in the wake of his 1809 one-man exhibition. As we know,
the exhibition failed to establish a successful platform for Blake as a public
artist and he spent the next decade or so struggling for commercial work,
including reproductive engraving commissions. Blake’s description of
Morland as a “blurrer” accords with aspects of his own theory of art, particularly his castigation of the near-universal preference of oil over watercolor as developed in the annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds and expressed
more fully in his Advertisement of the Exhibition and Descriptive Catalogue
(1809). During a period of professional difficulties, Blake read a newspaper report that seems to have offered sufficient vindication of his own
aesthetic theory that he was compelled to transcribe and comment on it in
his Notebook. As these examples suggest, manuscripts can offer intimate
access to Blake’s ideas and theories, and for some readers, Blake himself.
The ninety-six extant letters provide a treasure-trove of details on Blake,
and his personal and professional relationship, and as Hazard Adams
observes “much of what we think we know of Blake’s thought” derives
from his annotations.8
Early studies on Blake’s manuscripts tend to focus, by necessity, on
producing a reading text with, where relevant, bibliographical and historical contexts. Edwin Ellis and W.B. Yeats provide facsimile pages of Vala, or
7
These prints are The Idle Laundress (1788) and Industrious Cottager (1788). See Essick
(1983), 158–169.
8
Adams (2009) 3.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
8
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
The Four Zoas and the Notebook along with some interpretive commentary and a full but inaccurate transcript of the poem in their edition of
Blake’s works.9 A.G.B. Russell edited the first collection of Blake’s letters,
which was followed by three editions edited by Sir Geoffrey Keynes that
offer transcriptions augmented by letters to and about Blake, receipts,
memoranda concerning engraving commissions, and assorted manuscript
documents relating to Blake’s trial for sedition in January 1804. During
the 1960s, G.E. Bentley Jr. transcribed and edited two important manuscripts, Vala, or The Four Zoas (1963) and Tiriel (1967) including photographs of the original manuscripts and additional bibliographic and
pictorial context.10 These influential publications were followed by facsimiles of the Pickering manuscript, containing another of Blake’s most
anthologized poems, Auguries of Innocence: “To see a world in a grain of
sand/And heaven in wild flower” (E 493), and Blake’s Notebook.11 In the
mid-1980s, Michael Phillips transcribed, and annotated a facsimile edition
of An Island in the Moon (1986) while David V. Erdman and Cettina
Tramontano Magno published what they describe as “A Photographic
Facsimile of” The Four Zoas manuscript.12 This edition is smaller in format
than Bentley’s earlier facsimile, which reproduced the sheets of the manuscript to scale, but employed infrared photography that enabled the editors to see and describe for the first time many of the partially or wholly
erased images illustrating the manuscript. More recently, the Huntington
Library published a to-scale print facsimile of Blake’s Genesis manuscript.13
Using touchscreen digital technology, the British Library developed an
innovative electronic edition of the Notebook, which allows users to turn
virtual pages. The Blake Archive has, over the past two decades, assembled
the largest repository of digitized editions of Blake’s manuscripts, including many of the extant letters and receipts, the Notebook, the Pickering
manuscript, Tiriel, An Island in the Moon, and Vala, or The Four Zoas.
9
See Ellis and Yeats (1893); Vol. 3 contains lithographs of Vala, or, The Four Zoas, which
are unnumbered, along with transcriptions of the poem, errata, fragments, and descriptive
notes following on 1–174. Vol. 2 contains notes “About Vala”, 295–301. For the page numberings on the Vala manuscript, see Erdman and Magno (1987), 16–17.
10
Bentley’s edition of Tiriel (1967) also reproduces Blake’s wash drawings illustrating
the poem.
11
The Pickering Manuscript, ed. Charles Ryskamp (1972) and The Notebook of William
Blake: A Photographic and Typographic Facsimile ed. David V. Erdman (1973).
12
Phillips, An Island in the Moon (1986), and Erdman and Magno (1987).
13
Crosby and Essick (2012).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
9
These editions and facsimiles are guided by a fairly rigid definitional understanding of manuscripts as, in Donald Reiman’s words, “handwritten
memoranda or communications on paper”.14 As Vala, or The Four Zoas
demonstrates, Blake often reused paper, particularly larger, more expensive sheets. Blake’s thriftiness with paper accords with his practice of using
both sides of his copperplates to relief-etch his illuminated books. It
should be noted that Reiman’s strict definition of manuscripts becomes
unhelpful if not redundant because Blake not only used paper as a medium
for his writing, but other media as well including glass and copper. Indeed,
it is with Blake’s works in illuminated printing, that we can probably
extend this definition of manuscript. Robert Essick persuasively argues
that the malleability of Blake’s illuminated printing method invites the
seemingly contradictory terms “‘printed drawing’ and ‘printed
manuscript’”.15
Greater access to Blake’s manuscripts, particularly digitized versions,
has led in the last decade to symposia, conference panels, and a special
issue of the Huntington Library Quarterly (2012). This research sheds
light on these scribal artifacts with scholars deploying a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches while also addressing some of the
same questions that confronted and, at time confounded, earlier editors of
Blake. Perhaps the most persistent cluster of questions concerns the status
of the manuscripts within Blake’s oeuvre. How did some of these manuscripts function? Many of the manuscript poems, for example, are incomplete or unfinished works, with some indications that the Notebook, for
example, was an important site of composition and revision prior to relief
etching.16 There are drafts of “The Tyger” in the Notebook and “Holy
Thursday” in An Island in the Moon that Blake then relief-etched in Songs
of Innocence and of Experience. There has also been significant debate on
Blake’s original intention for Vala, or The Four Zoas before it expanded
beyond the early sections composed in fine copperplate hand.17 One of
Blake’s earliest extant manuscripts is the poem Tiriel with its accompanying wash drawing illustrations.18 Composed around 1789, this manuscript
Reiman (1993) 1.
Essick (2002) 23.
16
See Viscomi (1993) 28–30.
17
For this debate, see Essick, The Four Zoas: Intention and Production (1985) 210–220;
Mann (1985) 204–209, and Otto (1987) 144–146.
18
The wash drawings were separated, possibly posthumously, from the manuscript. See
Bentley (1967) 26–29.
14
15
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
10
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
contains verbal and visual motifs that appear in more developed form in
his later works. As Essick has observed, many of the pictorial motifs in the
wash drawings reappear in Blake’s early illuminated books and a modified
version of the line “why is one law given to the lion & the patient Ox” (E
285, l. 9) is a ‘proverb of hell’ from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.19
Blake’s reuse of certain visual motifs can, in part, be attributed to the
unfinished status of the Tiriel manuscript. Written in a fair copy hand, with
a title on the front wrapper denoting its status as a manuscript, Tiriel may
be considered a transitional work for Blake at a time when he was developing his illuminated printing process.20 The layout of the neatly drafted text
on eight manuscript pages, including four half-pages of text and thirty-­
nine deleted lines, suggests Blake envisaged a more conventional mode of
publication similar perhaps to the proof copy of The French Revolution
(1791). The medium and style of the accompanying designs, which seem
preliminary to engraving, coupled with their physical separation from the
manuscript suggest that this poem was intended to be published in letterpress and illustrated by full or half page line engravings.21 As Blake
focused on illuminated printing and the creation of his illuminated books,
he appears to have set aside the Tiriel manuscript and designs, as he would
do later with Vala, or the Four Zoas, occasionally returning to mine the
manuscript and reuse pictorial motifs from the wash drawings. Also, how
do scholars interpret the text and designs inscribed by Blake onto a glass
goblet or rummer? Blake used a diamond-tipped instrument to inscribe a
large angelic figure with wings spread and the following inscriptions:
“THOU HOLDER OF IMMORTAL DRINK/I GIVE THEE
PURPOSE NOW I THINK” and “BLAKE IN ANGUISH FELPHAM
AUG 1803”.22
Another cluster of questions prompted by Blake’s manuscripts concern
his scribal practices. The Notebook originally belonged to his younger
brother, Robert who died of tuberculosis in 1787, and seems to have circulated between the brothers. We know that Robert had another sketchbook now in the Huntington Library, which contains various anatomical
19
Also, see Essick (1983) 50–59 and 86. Characters such as Heva and Har from Tiriel also
reappear in the Song of Los (1795).
20
The title is a simple inscription in black ink on the front wrapper, “Tiriel/MS by Mr.
Blake”. Bentley suggests that the handwriting resembles Blake’s. See Bentley (1967) 52.
21
Essick (1973) 50.
22
See Bentley ‘The Felpham Rummer’ (1984) 94–99 and Essick, ‘A Question of
Attribution’ (1989) 90–100.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
11
studies and more developed compositions such as a Druid Ceremony and
The Approach of Doom, which Blake relief etched around 1792.23 The
Notebook also contains sketches attributed to Robert of assorted druidic
figures, medieval knights, and Shakespeare’s Oberon and Titania seated
on a lily. Blake relied on Robert’s compositional arrangement of Oberon
and Titania for a watercolor and plate 5 of The Song of Los.24 After Robert’s
death, Blake seems to have used the Notebook as a universal venue for his
creative expression in image and text. The pages contain anatomical studies, portraits and profiles, assorted visual designs including emblems for
The Gates of Paradise, sketches for the illuminated books and Night
Thoughts paintings, illustrations for Paradise Lost, and William Hayley’s
elephant ballad. Crowded around these designs Blake has written in a variety of hands epigrams and lyrics, including poems that would be revised
and relief-etched in Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a gospel, instructions on engraving, memoranda, drafts of the Public Address, and a
description of Vision of the Last Judgment. It is likely that the Notebook
remained a personal repository for much of Blake’s life while other manuscripts, such as The Pickering Manuscript, with its poems written clearly
and neatly in fair hand may have circulated amongst friends and patrons.25
Certainly, Blake’s use of the Notebook after Robert’s death was motivated by its symbolic identification with his brother; but was probably also
a matter of saving paper. Paper was dear, and as Joseph Viscomi reports by
“1818 … [p]aper cost 50 percent more than it has in 1704, due to the
excise taxes first levied in 1802 to help finance the war with France and
institutionalized until 1825”.26 In addition to Blake the enthusiastic
“scribbler” we should add Blake the “reuser,” as he repurposed both copperplates and paper, writing most of the manuscript of The Four Zoas on
proof sheets of his Night Thoughts illustrations, printed with Young’s
poem set in conventional typography. There is evidence, too, that Blake’s
process did not always result in manuscripts as he created directly on the
copperplate; Viscomi notes that in the:
23
See Butlin 1181/2 (Cat No. R 2 and 3). For Blake’s relief etching, see Essick
(1983) 12–13.
24
See Butlin 294 (Cat No. 245). For Robert’s Oberon and Titania sketch in the Notebook,
see Butlin 232 (Cat No. 201 5).
25
Also see Bentley (1966) 232–43.
26
Viscomi (1993) 352.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
12
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
illuminated books one sees the creative hand of Blake. The consistent reversal of illustrations and their sketches indicates that illustrations were drawn
freehand; the scarcity of such sketches suggests that illustrations were also
freely drawn, that the page design (or relation of parts that constitute the
design) was not sketched out in the form of a mock-up but was actually
composed on the plate.27
The Notebook does span many projects, though, and is described in
Erdman’s facsimile as “a standard stationer’s commodity of the 1780s cut
from laid paper sewed in gatherings of twelve leaves, probably originally
covered in somewhat heavier paper”; and “not counting Rossetti’s fly-­
leaves, consists of fifty-eight leaves measuring 19.6 X 15.7 cm. [half a folio
page] with an appendage of two leaves of different and smaller paper
added to the end of the book not later than 1818”.28
With his marginalia, Blake enthusiastically followed Johann Kaspar
Lavater’s invitation in Aphorisms on Man to interline and mark the text of
books.29 The Socratic precept for Lavater’s prompt is for his readers to
“know thyself” by responding to both agreeable ideas and “such as left a
sense of uneasiness”. Comprising sixteen volumes, Blake’s annotations are
written in a legible, if not always neat hand, with at least one instance of
mirror writing, and they reveal much about his reading practices as he
engages in conversations with living and dead writers.30 In the case of
Lavater, Blake was sufficiently enamored with the Aphorisms to draw a
heart around the author’s name on the title page, and reread and cross
reference certain maxims. With his annotations to Reynolds, Blake is
forceful and, at times, angry with the Royal Academy’s first president and
his dictates on the British school of painting. The annotations to Robert
John Thornton’s pamphlet, The Lord’s Prayer, Newly Translated, are
mostly parodic with some evincing two textual layers of pen and ink overwriting pencil, suggesting that Blake returned to his marginalia to, in this
case, restate his earlier responses.31 The attribution to Blake of marginalia
in a copy of Thomas Taylor’s The Mystical Initiations (1787) evinces a
more restrained engagement with the underscoring of passages and the
Ibid. 24.
Erdman and Moore (1997) 2.
29
For a list of books Blake owned, see BBS part V.
30
See page 82 of Lavater’s Aphorisms on Man (HEH Library 57431).
31
See Essick, The Works of William Blake in the Huntington Collections (1985) 183–4.
27
28
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
13
corrections of two printer’s errors.32 It also seems that Blake shared the
practice of annotating books with his wife. William Hayley gave Catherine
a copy of his most successful poem, The Triumphs of Temper, with the following inscription in black ink on the flyleaf: “To | Mrs Blake | from the
Author | 1803”.33 This copy also contains numerous pencil annotations,
mainly underlining and bracketing. While it is not possible to identify with
certainty the author of the pencil annotations, the particular passages and
words they underline suggest a source. For example, pencil underlining
occurs in the following lines: “Discontent’s eternal house” (canto 3, l.
53), and “Justly feel no joy, who none bestow” (canto 3, l. 59). Blake
became increasingly frustrated with his professional relationship with
Hayley from late 1801, and he and Catherine suffered from repeated
bouts of ill health in Felpham. In a letter to Butts of 10 January 1803,
Blake reported that “The Ague & Rheumatism have been almost her constant Enemies which she has combated in vain ever since we have been
here” (E 723). Blake appears to have attributed the cause of their frequent
illness to the proximity of their cottage to the English Channel. By the end
of January, the Blakes had formulated a plan to “take a House in some
village further from the Sea Perhaps Lavant” (E 726). Is it possible that
the pencil annotations in Catherine’s copy of The Triumphs of Temper
reflect the increasing discomfort and ill health the Blakes experienced during their Sussex sojourn? These experiences, together with Hayley’s
increasingly burdensome patronage and the incident with the soldiers that
resulted in Blake’s trial for sedition may have also inspired Blake to inscribe
“BLAKE IN ANGUISH” onto a glass goblet in August 1803.
After returning to London, Blake recorded in his Notebook that he and
Catherine indulged in bibliomancy or the practice of divination by picking
out a piece or passage when opening a book at random (sometimes the
Bible, but any text that the subject finds significant to them). Catherine,
goaded by a spirit to ask her fortune, chose Bysshe’s The Art of Poetry.
Blake also tried his own hand at bibliomancy. In chapter five of this volume, Jennifer Davis Michael offers a wide-ranging exploration of this incident. Michael’s chapter grapples with Blake’s scribal practices and his
reception by Gabriel Dante Rossetti. Though providing the sort of “systematic study of Blake’s manuscripts” that Haggarty suggests is beyond
the scope of this volume, Michael’s chapter along with the other
32
33
Cardinale and Cardinale (Winter 2010–2011) 83–102.
British Library 11656.g.8. This is a large-paper copy.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
14
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
contributions in this volume offer current research on his manuscripts and
scribal practices that is at the intersection of Digital Humanities, critical
theory, textual scholarship, Queer theory, Transgender Studies, reception
history, and bibliographical studies. The fourteen chapters that follow
draw on and extend previous scholarly work on Blake’s manuscripts.
Readers will find detailed commentary on a range of Blake’s manuscripts
from Island to The Four Zoas, the marginalia and letters, the Notebook,
and title pages, and a study of a manuscript focusing on Blake by early
twentieth-century author Sheila Kaye-Smith. Additionally, the co-editors
are honored to include a chapter by G.E. Bentley, Jr., the enormously
influential and foundational scholar in Blake studies who passed away
in 2017.
The collection is organized into three sections. Each section covers a
particular theme or set of related themes, or specific manuscript work. The
first section includes chapters that identify and discuss practices associated
with, or identifiable in, Blake’s manuscripts. The chapters in the second
section provide a variety of contexts, from historical to editorial, and readings that shed light on Blake’s longest manuscript work, Vala, or The Four
Zoas. The final section presents four chapters that address puzzles in
Blake’s manuscripts, illuminated books, and his influence on other
manuscripts.
Section I: Scribal Praxis comprises five chapters that examine Blake’s
scribal practices across a range of manuscripts. We are privileged to present
G.E. Bentley Jr.’s final essay in chapter two. Bentley’s chapter was submitted shortly before he passed away and his daughters, Sarah and Julie, have
kindly granted permission to publish in this volume. The chapter evokes
the spirit of Blake Books and Blake Books Supplement to document Blake’s
myriad ‘hands’ evident across his works, from manuscripts to illuminated
printing, showing there to be considerable variety in letter formations,
capitalizations, and extra-textual features such as catchwords, colophons,
and letter sizes. Angus Whitehead tackles the correspondence in chapter
three, discussing Blake’s compositional practice, his use of slang, epithets
for addressees, and stylistic differences while Elizabeth Potter offers a reassessment of Blake’s annotations to Reynolds in chapter four, analyzing the
marginalia alongside contemporary events, letters, and commercial work
to theorize Blake’s reading and writing patterns. In chapter five, Jennifer
Davis Michael shows how an instance of bibliomancy from Blake’s
Notebook raises significant questions about intertextuality, anthologizing,
and the pleasures and powers of reading. Concluding the first section is
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
15
Mark Crosby’s chapter discussing pentimento or artistic second thoughts
and variation in Blake’s manuscript title pages. Crosby argues that pentimento, like variation, was an integral component of Blake’s creative
practice.
Section II: Palimpsest: Vala, or The Four Zoas comprises five chapters
that tackle the longest manuscript work in Blake’s oeuvre: Vala, or the Four
Zoas. In chapter seven, Silvia Riccardi focuses on the way layout, calligraphy, and symbols are embedded in Blake’s style throughout the manuscript. Chapter eight sees Josephine A. McQuail fleshing out accounts of
how the fad of Antiquarianism in early Romanticism, along with the earlier, concentrated efforts of the Dilettanti Society, influenced Blake, showing in particular how works like Richard Payne Knight’s Discourse on the
Worship of Priapus informed some of the images in The Four Zoas. In chapter nine, Peter Otto (re)-engages with the conundrum of the two seventh
Nights in The Four Zoas. Drawing on the traumatic sublime, transcendence, and the analog and the digital, Otto asks what work is interruption
doing at this juncture in the manuscript? Chapters ten and eleven address
the daunting task of editing The Four Zoas in a digital environment. For
Mike Fox, the manuscript can be considered as a multi-dimensional auto-­
poietic system. Such a system, he argues, requires a new editorial approach
because past technologies were inadequate for realizing its multidimensionality. In chapter eleven, Oishani Sengupta et al. offer a case study of
the Blake Archive’s collaborative enterprise in multispectral imaging with
the British Library and the Lazarus Project. Through this project, the
Blake Archive has begun to incorporate multispectral imaging in the
development of a new kind of digital scholarly edition. Such an edition
leverages the interactivity of web-based design along with the expanded
vision of imaging science to create a digital model that balances the editorial goals of “readability” and “reliability” in previously unattainable ways.
Section III: Scribal Puzzles comprises chapters that, in differing ways,
address puzzles either in Blake’s manuscripts and illuminated books, or in
manuscript works inspired by Blake. In chapter twelve, Fernando
Castanedo investigates allusions to several works of art in Blake’s almost
epigrammatic, parodical use of ekphrasis in Island. In the next chapter,
Joseph Fletcher delves beneath the satirical clowning of the characters in
Island to find a deep awareness of, and engagement with, several ontological and epistemological traditions and contemporary developments in
natural science. Tommy Mayberry takes up Essick’s consideration of
Blake’s relief-etching process even in his formally printed illuminated
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
16
M. CROSBY AND J. A. MCQUAIL
books as illuminated manuscripts in chapter fourteen to offer a drag/
trans-reading of Oothoon and Theotormon. In the final chapter, Jason
Whittaker moves from Blake to twentieth-century reception history with
an investigation of Sheila Kaye Smith, a popular novelist during the interwar period, who authored a manuscript essay titled William Blake & The
New Jerusalem. This manuscript shows Kaye-Smith interacting with Blake
as she works through the polarities of philosophy and poetics. We hope
that the chapters in this volume, while building on previous studies, editions, and facsimiles, offer new information and, in some cases, new ways
to think about Blake’s manuscripts, scribal practices, and legacy.
References
Adams, Hazard. Blake’s Margins: An Interpretive Study of the Annotations.
Jefferson: Mcfarland. 2009.
Bentley, Jr. G. E. “The Date of Blake’s Pickering Manuscript or the Way of a Poet
with Paper.” Studies in Bibliography 19. (1966): 232–43.
Bentley, Jr., G. E. William Blake Tiriel: Facsimile and Transcript of the Manuscript.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1967.
Bentley, Jr., G. E. The Felpham Rummer: A New Angel and ‘Immortal Drink’
Attributed to William Blake. BIQ 18:2 (1984): 94–9.
Cardinale, Philip, J., and Joseph, R. A Newly Discovered Blake Book: William
Blake’s Copy of Thomas Taylor’s The Mystical Initiations; or Hymns of
Orpheus (1787). BIQ 44. (Winter 2010–11): 83–102.
Crosby, Mark and Robert N. Essick. Genesis William Blake’s Last Illuminated
Work. San Marino, Calif. HuntingtonLibrary. 2012.
Ellis, Edwin John, and W. B. Yeats, eds. The Works of William Blake, Poetic,
Symbolic, and Critical. 3 Vols. London: B. Quaritch. 1893.
Erdman, David, V. and Cettina Tramontano Magno, eds. The Four Zoas: A
Photographic Facsimile of the Manuscript with Commentary on the Illuminations.
Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. 1987.
Erdman, David, V. ed., with the assistance of Donald K. Moore. The Notebook of
William Blake: A Photographic and Typographic Facsimile. Oxford: Clarendon
Press. 1973.
Essick, Robert, N. The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1983.
Essick, Robert, N. “The Four Zoas: Intention and Production”. BIQ 18:4
(1985): 210–20.
Essick, Robert, N. “Question of Attribution: The ‘Felpham Rummer’ and William
Blake’s Graphic Inventions”. Journal of Glass Studies. 31 (1989): 90–100.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
INTRODUCTION: “WRITING IS THE DIVINE REVELATION”
17
Essick, Robert, N. William Blake: Visions of the Daughters of Albion. San Marino:
Huntington Library. 2002.
Haggarty, Sarah ed. William Blake in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 2019.
Lindberg, Bo. William Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job. Åbo: Åbo
Akademi. 1973.
Mann, Paul. “The Final State of The Four Zoas.” BIQ 18:4 (1985): 204–209.
Otto, Peter. “Final States, Finished Forms, and The Four Zoas”. BIQ 20.4.
(1987): 144–146.
Reiman, Donald H. The Study of Modern Manuscripts: Public, Confidential, and
Private. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1993.
Viscomi, Joseph. Blake and the Idea of the Book. Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 1993.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
PART I
Scribal Praxis
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.