1 April 1999

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of two new electronic editions of Blake's satiric masterpiece, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. They are of copies C and F, both of which are in the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Marriage copy C, printed in 1790 in green ink on both sides of the leaf, was printed and colored in the style of early copies of Songs of Innocence. It has not been reproduced in color before. Marriage copy F was beautifully and heavily color printed on one side of the leaf (with copy E) in c. 1794. It was produced in the style used for Songs of Experience of Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy F, color printed in 1794 and recently published in the Archive, as well as for Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy F, also in the Archive.

Marriage is the only illuminated book Blake did not sign and date; he did, however, pen in "1790" over line 1 in plate 3 of copy F, thereby clarifying the plate's allusion to 1757 ("and it is now thirty-three years since its advent"), the year of the Last Judgment, according to Swedenborg, and of Blake's birth.

Copies C and F join Marriage copy D, already in the Archive. Copy D, the Lessing J. Rosenwald copy in the Library of Congress, is also of bibliographical interest, in that it was printed in c. 1795 as part of a set of illuminated books that were printed on folio-size paper. This large-paper set also included America copy A, All Religions are One copy A, There is No Natural Religion copy L, and The Book of Thel copy F, all of which are in the Archive. It also included Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy G, The First Book of Urizen copy B, Europe copy H, and Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy R, all of which will enter the Archive within the next six months.

We now have thirty-one copies of sixteen illuminated books in the Archive. In addition to the books, we recently opened a new wing of the Archive, consisting of an extensive array of supporting materials: an updated and expanded Plan of the Archive, a statement of Editorial Principles and Methodology, a summary of the Archive's technical design and implementation, and a list of Frequently Asked Questions. Our hope is that these extensive documentary materials will prove valuable both to our own growing user community as well as to scholars interested in the theory and practice of electronic editing more generally.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi, Editors
Matthew Kirschenbaum, Project Manager
The William Blake Archive

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