6 August 1999

The William Blake Archive http://www.blakearchive.org is pleased to announce the publication of new electronic editions of copies B and U of Blake's Songs of Innocence.

Copies B and U are a study in contrasts, yet both are from the earliest printings of this book. Copy B, now in the Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress, was printed with fifteen other copies of Innocence in 1789, four of which were later joined with Experience impressions, printed in 1794, to form Songs of Innocence and of Experience copies B, C--which is in the Archive--D, and E. Unlike many of these early copies of Innocence, copy B still consists of all 31 plates originally composed and executed for Innocence. Like them, however, it was printed in a raw sienna ink on 17 leaves and exemplifies Blake's early printing and coloring style. The plates were wiped of their plate borders, the illustrations very lightly washed in watercolors, and the texts left unwashed. This mode of presentation, along with printing both sides of the leaves to create facing pages, emphasized the prints as book pages rather than prints or paintings. Good examples of printing and coloring illuminated plates to look like minatures can be seen in Songs copy Z, also in the Archive.

Innocence copy U, from the Houghton Library, Harvard University, is an excellent example of printing illuminated plates to look like prints. Like etchings and engravings, they were printed on one side of the leaf in black ink and left uncolored. Copy U, which was printed with untraced copy V, had been dated c. 1814, because of some stylistic similarities it shares with illuminated works assumed to have been produced around that time. But, in fact, copy U is the first copy of Innocence printed. The presence of a unique first state for "Infant Joy" proves this sequence; the bottom part of the "J" in the title is missing in all extant impressions, but here it extends into the flower. Copy U was printed before copy B and all other early copies; the ink color, printing style (recto only), and lack of hand coloring suggest a date of printing before Blake had developed his special ways of producing his illuminated books and instead repeated styles and techniques long familiar to him as a commercial engraver.

Both electronic editions have newly edited SGML-encoded texts and new images scanned and color-corrected from first-generation 4x5" transparencies; they are each fully searchable for both text and images and supported by the Inote and ImageSizer applications described in our previous updates.

With the publication of these two titles, the Archive now contains 35 copies of 18 separate books, including at least one copy of every one of Blake's works in illuminated printing except the 100 plates of Jerusalem (forthcoming).

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Technical Editor
The William Blake Archive

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