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AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY VOLUME 31 NUMBER 4 SPRING 1998 £%Ue AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY VOLUME 31 NUMBER 4 SPRING 1998 CONTENTS Articles Blake in the Marketplace, 1997 by Robert N. Essick 108 William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 1997 By G. E. Bentley, Jr. With the Assistance ofKeiko Aoyama for Japanese Publications 137 Newsletter Blake Course at the Tate Gallery, Correction 175 CONTRIBUTORS INFORMATION G. E. BENTLEY is completing a biography of Blake. SLAKE /AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY is published under the spon• sorship of the Department of English, University of Roch• ROBERT N. ESSICK, Professor of English, University of Cali• ester. fornia, Riverside, collects and writes about Blake. SUBSCRIPTIONS are $50 for institutions, $25 for individuals. All subscriptions are by the volume (1 year, 4 issues) and begin with the summer issue. Subscription payments re• EDITORS ceived after the summer issue will be applied to the 4 issues of the current volume. Foreign addresses (except Canada and Mexico) require an $8 per volume postal surcharge for EDITORS: Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley surface, an $18 per volume surcharge for air mail delivery. BIBLIOGRAPHER: G. E. Bentley, Jr. U.S. currency or international money order necessary. Make REVIEW EDITOR: Nelson Hilton checks payable to Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. Address all ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR GREAT BRITAIN: David Worrall subscription orders and related communications to Patricia Neill, Blake, Department of English, University of Roches• PRODUCTION OFFICE: Patricia Neill, Department of English, ter, Rochester, NY 14627. University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 MANAGING EDITOR: Patricia Neill BACK ISSUES are available at a reduced price. Address Patricia TELEPHONE 716/275-3820 Neill for a list of issues and prices. FAX 716/442-5769 PRODUCTION OFFICE EMAIL: [email protected] MANUSCRIPTS are welcome. Send two copies, typed and docu• mented according to forms suggested in The MLA Style Morris Eaves, Department of English, University of Roch• Manual, to either of the editors: Morris Eaves, Dept. of En• ester, Rochester NY 14627 glish, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627; Morton Email: [email protected] D. Paley, Dept. of English, University of California, Berke• ley, CA 94720-1030. Morton D. Paley, Department of English, University of Cali• fornia, Berkeley CA 94720-1030 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD SERIAL NUMBER: 0160-628X. Blake/An Email: [email protected] Illustrated Quarterly is indexed in the Modern Language Association's International Bibliography, the Modern Hu• G. E. Bentley, Jr., 246 MacPherson Avenue, Toronto, Ontario manities Research Association's Annual Bibliography of En• M4V 1A2. The University of Toronto declines to forward mail. glish Language and Literature, The Romantic Movement: A Email: GBentley@chass. utoronto.ca Selective and Critical Bibliography (ed. David V. Erdman et al.), American Humanities Index, Arts and Humanities Ci• Nelson Hilton, Department of English, University of Georgia, tation Index, Current Contents and the Bibliography of the Athens, GA 30602 History of Art. Email: [email protected] David Worrall, St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, Waldegrave Road, Twickenham TW1 4SX England Email: [email protected] © 1998 Copyright Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley COVER ILLUSTRATION: Henry Fuseli, Callipyga: Mrs. Fuseli, With her Skirts Lifting Standing Before a Dressing Table with Phallic Supports. Photo courtesy of Sotheby's London. that he had rediscovered copy M of The Marriage, untraced ARTICLES since its sale at the great Linnell auction of 1918. Christie's offered copy M for sale on 26 November. Bidding was sur• prisingly muted and Windle, acting for the Bentley collec• Blake in the Marketplace, 1997 tion of Toronto, had to battle only against the reserve (the price below which the auction house will not sell a specific lot). Thus, with a bid of just £9,000 (£10,350 with the buyer's BY ROBERT N. ESSICK premium), Windle acquired the prize. See illus. 4 and its caption for details about copy M. One further plate from an illuminated book changed hands in 1997. Europe plate 1, sometimes titled "The An• Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing cient of Days" or "God Creating the Universe," is probably be lost. Blake's best-known design and arguably among the most John 6:12 famous images in the English-speaking world. The impres• sion formerly owned by the artist and printer Leonard Baskin has now migrated into my collection (illus. 1). It is 997 may have fallen just short of being an annus mirabilis the first original print of "The Ancient of Days" to appear for the Blake marketplace, but it can fairly lay claim to 1 on the market since 1970, when Paul Mellon purchased being an annus revelatio. The first month brought forth the version in brown ink, now in the Yale Center for Brit• the first discovery: a previously-unrecorded impression, in ish Art, from the New Haven book dealer C. A. Stonehill. a previously-unknown early state, of one of Blake's origi• For reproductions and some new information (or at least nal separate plates, "Lucifer and the Pope in Hell." Further, speculations) about "The Ancient of Days," see illus. 1-3 this newly-discovered impression (see illus. 10 and com• and their captions. pare to illus. 11 and 12) is a "touched" proof—that is, it Early in August, a woman of some years walked into the bears pencil additions by Blake indicating further work to London, Bond Street, shop of Marlborough Rare Books. be considered for execution on the copperplate. As far as I She carried a shopping bag containing three volumes: a late can determine, this is the only extant touched proof of any nineteenth-century edition of The Pilgrim's Progress; an of Blake's separate plates. Such proofs help us understand album of magazine and newspaper clippings about Blake's working methods and give us a brief glimpse of the Shakespeare, mostly dating from the 1920s; and George printmaker thinking with his hands and eyes as he sketches Cumberland's copy of Blake's 1809 Descriptive Catalogue, with a pencil over a trial impression in an early state. Along last recorded by Cumberland in his journal in November with "Albion rose" and "The Accusers of Theft Adultery 1809 and the only traced example remaining in private Murder," "Lucifer and the Pope in Hell" is one of Blake's hands. These books had been acquired by the woman's late rarest separate plates. All three are products of the first half father many years ago. I have no information about the of the 1790s and express Blake's radical political views of destiny of the first two works; after some complex but that period. Any comprehensive account of these views friendly negotiations, with Michael Brand of Marlborough must consider their pictorial, and not just their textual, and John Windle acting as intermediaries, the Descriptive expression. Catalogue made its way into my collection. The printed text Patrick Noon, formerly the Curator of Drawings and is richly supplemented, with unique annotations by Blake, Prints at the Yale Center for British Art, recognized some a flyleaf note by Cumberland ("They say Blake was mad: If time ago that an unattributed drawing in the Center's col• so Shakespeare 8c Milton were so too...."), and two letters lection was a work by Blake. This discovery was not an• by John Linnell. See the entry below under "First Editions nounced until the publication of Noon's catalogue for the of Blake's Writings" and illus. 5-7 and their captions for Blake exhibition at the Center, 2 April through 6 July 1997. more information on this slender but intriguing pamphlet. See illus. 8 and its caption for the drawing and informa• The Tate Gallery has long been the possessor and exhibi• tion about it. tor of 10 of Blake's 12 large color prints, designed and first John Windle, the San Francisco book dealer who spe• executed in 1795. The missing designs were Naomi Entreat• cializes in Blake and his circle, was as usual in London in ing Ruth and Orpah (impressions are in the Fitzwilliam Mu• June to exhibit at one, and attend all, of the annual book seum and the Victoria and Albert Museum) and Satan Ex• fairs. He also paid a visit to Christie's, where he found a ulting over Eve (Getty Museum and collection of the artist rather ordinary copy of the Job engravings. Tucked within John Craxton). The Craxton impression of Satan Exulting this volume was something extraordinary—a copy of plates was acquired by the Tate early in 1997. This purchase, as• 25-27 of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, accom• sisted by several charitable institutions and private indi• panied by a handwritten note by the collector Frank Rinder. viduals, was made as a most fitting tribute to Martin Butlin, A brief glance at Bentley's Blake Books proved to Windle 108 Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly Spring 1998 formerly the Keeper of the British Collection at the Tate landscape to caricature. All had been in the same family and, as all readers of this journal will know, one of the great since their original purchase at or near the time of publi• Blake scholars of this century. On arrival at the Tate, the cation. The group included a stunning collection of sepa• print was almost invisible because of one or more coats of rate prints after Fuseli (11 prints in seven lots), with three dark brown varnish. There may also be some rather clumsy printed in colors. The sale also placed on offer a rare copy restorations under the varnish, particularly on Satan's face.