22 November, 2006

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of an electronic edition of Blake's water color illustrations for Robert Blair's The Grave. These are probably the 20 designs selected in 1805 by R. H. Cromek for publication in his forthcoming edition of The Grave, although only 12 were engraved by Louis Schiavonetti for the volume, published in 1808. One design, The Widow Embracing her Husband's Grave, has been known for many years, but the other 19 water colors disappeared between their auction in 1836 and their dramatic rediscovery in 2001. These 19 were sold individually at auction in spring 2006 and are now widely dispersed. The Grave water colors are presented in our Preview mode, one that provides all the features of the Archive except Image Search and Inote (our image annotation program). They join Schiavonetti's engravings and Blake's white-line etching of one design, "Deaths Door," previously published in the Archive.

As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible through the continuing support of the Library of Congress, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and by the cooperation of the international array of libraries, museums, and private collectors that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors
William Shaw, project manager
The William Blake Archive