16 October 1998
The editors of the William Blake Archive http://www.iath.virginia/edu/blake are pleased to announce the publication of four new electronic editions of Blake's illuminated books. They are:
These three works are Blake's final illuminated books, their composition dateable between 1822 (The Ghost of Abel, On Homers Poetry [and] On Virgil) and c. 1826-27 (Laocoön). In the words of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, they offer Blake's "Last Testament" on subjects ranging from aesthetic theory to political economy, from forgiveness to apocalyptic judgment. A drama in miniature, The Ghost of Abel addresses "Lord Byron in the Wilderness" (plate 1) and, more specifically, the issues of vengeance and forgiveness raised by Byron's Cain: A Mystery (1821). The broadsheet On Homers Poetry [and] On Virgil challenges these representative figures of classical learning, with special emphasis on concepts of unity as an artistic ideal, identity, and the destructive consequences of imperialism. There are five copies extant for each of these works, which, like most of Blake's illuminated books, were produced in relief etching; the Laocoön plate, which is an intaglio etching/engraving, is extant in two copies. Through a careful representation and restoration of the famous Hellenistic sculptural group, Blake attempts to return the Laocoön to its supposed Hebraic origins and its allegorical meanings, revealed by the terse yet intellectually expansive texts with which Blake surrounds the central image.
All of these editions have newly edited SGML-encoded texts and are all fully searchable for both text and images and supported by the unique Inote and ImageSizer applications described in our previous updates. We now have twenty-six copies of sixteen illuminated books in the Archive. Late this year and early in the next, we will add Milton copy D and Jerusalem copy E. We will also be adding at least six more copies of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, two copies of Songs of Innocence, five copies of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, four copies of The Book of Urizen, and two copies each of America, a Prophecy and Europe, a Prophecy. In addition, by the end of 1998 we will provide a fully-searchable SGML edition of David V. Erdman's Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake.
In the coming weeks we will also be opening a brand-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, a list of Frequently Asked Questions, an in-depth illustrated Tour highlighting the Archive's features and some ways to use its resources, and more. 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. We will make a separate announcement when these materials are available on the site.
Finally, on our recently opened Contributing Collections page, we plan to begin adding color-coded and linked lists of each institution's entire Blake collection to indicate what is and is not in the Archive and what is forthcoming. In addition to providing a convenient index of the scope and contents of the Archive, these lists should also be useful to scholars in planning research trips.
Morris Eaves, Robert Essick, Joseph Viscomi
Blake
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